MUSE tagged posts

Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), astronomers have revealed the closest pair of supermassive black holes to Earth ever observed. The two objects also have a much smaller separation than any other previously spotted pair of supermassive black holes and will eventually merge into one giant black hole.

Voggel and her team were able to determine the masses of the two objects by looking at how the gravita...

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...

One of the new dark-galaxy candidates, identified through a combination of spectral information (left) and images reflecting the emission of gas (middle) and stars (right). The position of the dark-galaxy candidate is marked by the red circle. Credit: R. A. Marino / MUSE

The identification of at least six candidates for dark galaxies could help filling an important gap in our understanding of galaxy evolution. Dark galaxies have a few (if any) stars in them and are, for that reason, notoriously difficult to detect with current instruments.

Despite substantial progress over the past half a century in understanding of how galaxies form, important open questions remain regarding how precisely the diffuse gas known as the ‘intergalactic medium’ is converted into stars...