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    Black Hole found Hiding in Star Cluster Outside Our Galaxy

    November 12, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

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    Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), astronomers have discovered a small black hole outside the Milky Way by looking at how it influences the motion of a star in its close vicinity. This is the first time this detection method has been used to reveal the presence of a black hole outside of our galaxy. The method could be key to unveiling hidden black holes in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, and to help shed light on how these mysterious objects form and evolve.

    Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), astronomers have discovered a small black hole outside the Milky Way by looking at how it influences the motion of a star in its close vicinity...

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    This is what it looks like when a Black Hole Snacks on a Star

    September 18, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Illustration of a black hole shredding a star in a tidal disruption event
    This illustration shows a glowing stream of material from a star, torn to shreds as it was being devoured by a supermassive black hole. The feeding black hole is surrounded by a ring of dust, not unlike the plate of a toddler is surrounded by crumbs after a meal.NASA/JPL-Caltech

    While black holes and toddlers don’t seem to have much in common, they are remarkably similar in one aspect: Both are messy eaters, generating ample evidence that a meal has taken place.

    But whereas one might leave behind droppings of pasta or splatters of yogurt, the other creates an aftermath of mind-boggling proportions. When a black hole gobbles up a star, it produces what astronomers call a “tidal disruption event...

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    Astronomers discover how to Feed a Black Hole

    August 2, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The image shows the process of nuclear feeding of a black hole in the galaxy NGC 1566, and how the dust filaments, which surround the active nucleus, are trapped and rotate in a spiral around the black hole until it swallows them. Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO).
    The image shows the process of nuclear feeding of a black hole in the galaxy NGC 1566, and how the dust filaments, which surround the active nucleus, are trapped and rotate in a spiral around the black hole until it swallows them. Credit: ESO.

    Researchers have discovered long narrow dust filaments which surround and feed black holes in the centers of galaxies, and which could be the natural cause of the darkening of the centers of many galaxies when their nuclear black holes are active.

    The black holes at the centres of galaxies are the most mysterious objects in the Universe, not only because of the huge quantities of material within them, millions of times the mass of the Sun, but because of the incredibly dense concentration of matter in a volume no bigger than that of our Solar ...

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    Black Holes Help with Star Birth

    June 15, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Virtual milky way: Gas density around a massive central galaxy in a group in the virtual universe of the TNG50 simulation. Gas inside the galaxy corresponds to the bright vertical structure: a gaseous disk. To the left and right of that structure… [more]
    © TNG Collaboration/Dylan Nelson

    The cosmic mass monsters clear the way for the formation of new suns in satellite galaxies. Research combining systematic observations with cosmological simulations has found that, surprisingly, black holes can help certain galaxies form new stars. On scales of galaxies, the role of supermassive black holes for star formation had previously been seen as destructive — active black holes can strip galaxies of the gas that galaxies need to form new stars...

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