NASA’s NuSTAR Probes Puzzling Galaxy Merger of the Was 49 System
A supermassive black hole inside the tiny galaxy Was 49b is challenging astronomers’ ideas about what happens when two galaxies become one. Was 49 is…
astrophysics
Hubble Reveals a Supermassive Black Hole Kicked Out of Galactic Core
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers reveal a supermassive black hole that has been propelled out of the center of the distant galaxy 3C186. The…
Exomoons Likely Play a Significant Role in White Dwarf Pollution
New research from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics identifies exomoons as a likely source of the apparent accretion of rocky material onto some white dwarf…
Astronomers Document Remarkable Changes on Comet 67P
The Rosetta mission has documented remarkable changes on the surface of Comet 67P, revealing growing fractures, collapsing cliffs, rolling boulders and moving material. Images returned…
NASA’s Swift Reveals a Star’s Plunge into a Black Hole
Using observations from NASA’s Swift satellite, a team of astronomers detail the tidal disruption event named ASASSN-14li. Some 290 million years ago, a star much…
New Evidence Yields Clues to Breakup of Multiple-Star System
In the search for rogue planets and failed stars astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have created a new mosaic image of the Orion…
Astronomers Discover a Black Hole “Choking” on Stellar Debris
A team of astronomers has discovered a supermassive black hole that is “choking” on a sudden influx of stellar debris. The black hole is located…
ESO Observations Show Dark Matter Less Influential in Galaxies in Early Universe
New research reveals that the outer parts of massive disc galaxies 10 billion years ago were rotating less quickly than the spiral galaxies, like the…
Astronomers Show Very Young Galaxies Dominated by ‘Normal’ Matter, Not Dark Matter
A new set of observations of very young galaxies show that they are completely dominated by ‘normal’ matter, suggesting that dark matter plays a much…
Astronomers Discover a Massive Outburst in a Star-Forming Cloud
Astronomers have discovered an extraordinary outburst in the massive protostellar system NGC6334I-MM1. The outburst, apparently triggered by an avalanche of star-forming gas crashing onto the…
Chandra Discovers a Star in the Closest Known Orbit Around a Black Hole
Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory as well as NASA’s NuSTAR and CSIRO’s Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), a team of astronomers reveals evidence for a…
Astronomers Show Radiation Helped Fuel The First Massive Black Holes
A newly published study adds evidence to one theory of how ancient black holes, about a billion times heavier than our sun, may have formed…
Astronomers Reveal Superluminous Supernova Gaia16apd is Powered by a Magnetar
A team of astronomers studying the superluminous supernova Gaia6apd has concluded in part from the behavior of its extraordinary ultraviolet emission that it is powered…
New Hubble Observations Help Date the Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way
New Hubble observations help astronomers determine an accurate age for the Fermi Bubbles and how they came to be. For the supermassive black hole at…
Astronomers Examine the Possibility That Fast Radio Bursts Originate from Extragalactic Civilizations
A new study from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics suggests that fast radio bursts could be evidence of advanced alien technology. The search for extraterrestrial…
Scientists Use Atomic Clocks to Detect Gravitational Waves
In a newly published study, scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics detail a sensitive new method for detecting gravitational waves. The recent detection of…
Scientists Measure Temperature Swings of Black Hole Winds for the First Time
A team of scientists has measured rapidly varying temperatures in hot gas emanating from around a black hole for the first time. These ultrafast “winds”…
Astrophysicists Produce High-Resolution Map of Dark Matter
A team of astrophysicists has produced one of the highest-resolution maps of dark matter to date, offering a detailed case for the existence of cold…