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    Fossil from the Big Bang discovered with W. M. Keck Observatory

    December 20, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space


    Within the gas in the (blue) filaments connecting the (orange) galaxies lurk rare pockets of pristine gas — vestiges of the Big Bang that have somehow been orphaned from the explosive, polluting deaths of stars, seen here as circular shock waves around some orange points.
    Credit: TNG COLLABORATION

    Rare relic is one of only three fossil clouds known in the universe. A relic cloud of gas, orphaned after the Big Bang, has been discovered in the distant universe by astronomers using the world’s most powerful optical telescope, the W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii.

    The discovery of such a rare fossil, led by PhD student Fred Robert and Professor Michael Murphy at Swinburne University of Technology, offers new information about how the first galaxies in the universe formed...

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    Astronomers find Fastest-Growing Black Hole known in Space

    May 17, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Computer-simulated image of a supermassive black hole. Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Coe, J. Anderson, and R. van der Marel (STScI) [link]

    Computer-simulated image of a supermassive black hole. Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Coe, J. Anderson, and R. van der Marel (STScI) [link]

    Astronomers at ANU have found the fastest-growing black hole known in the Universe, describing it as a monster that devours a mass equivalent to our sun every two days. The astronomers have looked back more than 12 billion years to the early dark ages of the Universe, when this supermassive black hole was estimated to be the size of about 20 billion suns with a 1% growth rate every one million years.

    “This black hole is growing so rapidly that it’s shining thousands of times more brightly than an entire galaxy, due to all of the gases it sucks in daily that cause lots of friction and heat,” said Dr Wolf from the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophys...

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    Rotational Rate of one of the most Massive Black Holes in the universe Accurately Measured

    March 11, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    An illustration of the binary black hole system in OJ287. The predictions of the model are verified by observations. Credit: Gary Poyner, UK

    An illustration of the binary black hole system in OJ287. The predictions of the model are verified by observations. Credit: Gary Poyner, UK

    An international team using several optical telescopes and NASA’s SWIFT X-ray telescope. The rotational rate of this massive black hole is 1/3 of the maximum spin rate allowed in General Relativity. This 18 billion solar mass heavy black hole powers a quasar OJ287 which lies about 3.5 billion light years away from Earth. This quasar lies very close to the apparent path of the Sun’s motion on the celestial sphere as seen from Earth, where most searches for asteroids and comets are conducted. Therefore, its optical photometric measurements already cover more than 100 years...

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    Object located around a Black Hole 5 Billion light-years from Earth has been measured

    February 26, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Two of the authors of this paper: Evencio Mediavilla (IAC) and Jorge Jímenez Vicente (UGR). Credit: Two of the authors of this paper: Evencio Mediavilla (IAC) and Jorge Jímenez Vicente (UGR).

    Two of the authors of this paper: Evencio Mediavilla (IAC) and Jorge Jímenez Vicente (UGR). Credit: Two of the authors of this paper: Evencio Mediavilla (IAC) and Jorge Jímenez Vicente (UGR).

    Researchers have succeeded in measuring the inner edge of the disk of matter that orbits around a supermassive black hole in a quasar > 5B light yrs from earth(an object the size of our solar system that emits as much energy as a whole galaxy). It’s the most accurate measure achieved until now of such a small and distant object, and it has been achieved thanks to the so-called gravitational microlensing effect, caused by stars belonging to a galaxy between us and the quasar, and which may magnify tiny regions within the quasar.

    In particular, they have managed to measure the inner edge of the disk o...

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