supermassive black hole tagged posts

Structure suggested by theorists decades ago. Astronomers used the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to make the first direct image of a dusty, doughnut-shaped feature surrounding the supermassive black hole at the core of one of the most powerful radio galaxies in the Universe – a feature first postulated by theorists nearly four decades ago as an essential part of such objects.

The scientists studied Cygnus A, a galaxy some 760 million light-years from Earth. The galaxy harbors a black hole 2...

Pulse pattern suggests distant black hole must be spinning at least at 50% the speed of light. On Nov. 22, 2014, astronomers spotted a rare event in the night sky: A supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy, nearly 300 million light years from Earth, ripping apart a passing star. The event, known as a tidal disruption flare, for the black hole’s massive tidal pull that tears a star apart, created a burst of X-ray activity near the center of the galaxy...

Artist impression of W2246-0526, the most luminous known galaxy, and three companion galaxies. Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. Dagnello

ALMA data show the most luminous galaxy in the universe has been caught in the act of stripping away nearly half the mass from at least three of its smaller neighbors. The light from this galaxy, known as W2246-0526, took 12.4 billion years to reach us, so we are seeing it as it was when our universe was only about a tenth of its present age.

New observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/ submillimeter Array (ALMA) reveal distinct streamers of material being pulled from three smaller galaxies and flowing into the more massive galaxy, which was discovered in 2015 by NASA’s space-based Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)...

Artist impression of Abell 2597 showing the central supermassive black hole expelling cold, molecular gas — like the pump of a giant intergalactic fountain.
Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF; D. Berry

Plumes of cold molecular gas spray out by black hole a billion light-years from Earth. Galaxy evolution can be chaotic and messy, but it seems that streams of cold gas spraying out from the region around supermassive black holes may act to calm the storm. This is according to an international team of scientists who have provided the first clear and compelling evidence of this process in action.

Using the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) of telescopes, the team, which includes researchers from Cardiff University, has observed a supermassive black hole acting like a ‘monumental fountain’...