supermassive black holes tagged posts

This image shows the elliptical galaxy NGC 4889 in front of hundreds of background galaxies, and deeply embedded within the Coma galaxy cluster. Well-hidden from human eyes, there is a gigantic supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. Credit: NASA & ESA

The placid appearance of NGC 4889 can fool the unsuspecting observer. But the elliptical galaxy harbours one of the most supermassive black holes ever discovered. Located ~300 million light-years away in the Coma Cluster, the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4889, the brightest and largest galaxy in this image has a black hole that is 21 billion times the mass of the Sun. The event horizon has a diameter of ~130 billion kilometres. This is about 15X the diameter of Neptune’s orbit from the Sun...

Stick with me and I’ll show you the universe. Artist’s impression of LISA Pathfinder. ESA, CC BY-ND

LISA pathfinder mission will prepare the way for us to study violent events that we’ve never seen before – such as the creation of massive black holes. The probe is to test technology needed to launch another mission, eLISA, in 2034, which will aim to detect gravitational waves. Intriguingly, the project may also help us prove some of the most extreme aspects of 3Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

Defn: General relativity states that gravity is just a manifestation of the fact that mass causes the surrounding space to curve, and it is the curvature of space that dictates the path followed by any other object, or indeed by light...

Figure showing the different size scales of accreting objects. Credit: Simone Scaringi

Accretion is the growth in mass of an object by gravitationally collecting material from its surroundings. “In our paper (Astrophysical accretion is a universal process in objects from proto-stars to supermassive black holes), we discovered a relationship that spans the range of different types of accreting objects, from proto-stars, much like our sun was at its time of birth, to white dwarfs to supermassive black holes with a billion times the mass of the sun located in galaxies millions of light-years away,” Maccarone said.

“In these systems there is some characteristic timescale for the variability – typically the large brightenings and fadings occur with that timescale...

The image at the top of the page shows a jet of particles shooting out of the black hole at the center of galaxy M87. ( Avery E. Broderick, University of Waterloo/Perimeter Institute)

Using NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) satellite observatory, the team detected the high-energy x-rays from 5 supermassive black holes previously clouded from direct view by dust and gas. The research, led by astronomers at Durham University, UK, supports the theory that potentially millions more supermassive black holes exist in the Universe, but are hidden from view.

The scientists pointed NuSTAR at 9 candidate hidden supermassive black holes that were thought to be extremely active at the centre of galaxies, but where the full extent of this activity was potentially obscured from view...