361–380 of 607 results
Merged supermassive black hole, 3C 186

Black Holes

Gravitational Waves Dethrone Supermassive Black Hole

Astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole not sitting in its customary seat at the center of its galaxy. Gravitational waves from a recent merger may have ejected the black hole.

Orion Nebula

Stellar Science

Runaway Star Points to Stellar Nursery Free-for-all

The discovery of a runaway star in Hubble's image of the Orion Nebula suggests a stellar tussle ejected three stars 540 years ago.

Galaxy rotation curves

Cosmology

Less Dark Matter in Young Galaxies?

A new study of six young, star-forming galaxies suggests they have less dark matter than expected. But the results may say more about galaxy evolution than about the nature of dark matter.

Black hole winds

Black Holes

Swift Black Hole Winds May Shape Galaxy

Winds that charge away from supermassive black holes at a fraction of the speed of light have long been mysterious and even contentious. Now, new evidence sheds light on their origins.

Solar System

Find New Worlds, Film an Eclipse & Do Some Citizen Science!

Hankering to discover new solar systems or understand our own? These citizen science projects and public data troves will help you fill your free time.

Solar System

Scientists Recreate Space Weather of 400 Years Ago

Scientists are studying 400-year-old data to predict space weather in the coming decades — and it seems that future may hold fewer Northern Lights.

Decade-long tidal disruption event

Black Holes

Black Hole Feeds on Star for a Decade

Unlucky stars serve as brilliant but short-lived snacks when they wander too close to supermassive black holes. But one such black hole is still gnawing on its stellar meal after a decade.

Gravitationally lensed quasar

Cosmology

H0Li COW! Is Our Universe Expanding Faster Than We Thought?

Observations of lensed quasars suggest the universe is expanding more quickly than we thought. But they contradict what we know about the young universe.

Simulated massive star formation

Stellar Science

Massive Stars Grow By Eating Finger Food

Astronomers don’t understand how the galaxy’s most massive stars form, but a new simulation sheds light on the process of stellar birth.

Milky Way

New Mass Estimate for the Milky Way

Astronomers have observed the motion of distant star clusters to measure our galaxy’s mass. The new estimate places the Milky Way in the lightweight class of galaxies.

Black Holes

Milky Way’s Black Hole Is Throwing Cosmic Spitballs

Every now and then, the Milky Way’s central, supermassive black hole tears apart a star and flings away some of its innards. Now astronomers think they know how to spot these cosmic spitballs.

Chandra's deepest image

Space Missions

1,000 Black Holes in Deepest-Ever X-ray Image

The Chandra X-ray Observatory has gazed at a small patch of sky for almost 12 weeks, revealing 1,008 X-ray-emitting sources — most of them supermassive black holes.

Spinning black hole tidal disruption event

Stellar Science

"Brightest Supernova Ever" or Shredded Star?

An incredible blaze of light discovered more than a year ago still has astronomers baffled as to its cause - and the answer may be contrary to recent headlines.

Measuring vacuum birefringence

Astronomy & Observing News

Does This Neutron Star Confirm an 80-Year-Old Quantum Prediction?

Scientists have been looking for decades to confirm a weird quantum effect first predicted in 1936. Have they finally found hard evidence for it?

Roundest star

Stellar Science

Astronomers Discover Roundest Star

Asteroseismologists delving into the Kepler mission's data trove have found a star that appears to be more spherical than any natural object.

Protoplanetary disk

Exoplanets

Planet-forming Disks Revealed in Striking Images

Three teams of astronomers used the SPHERE instrument on the Very Large Telescope to image protoplanetary disks around nearby stars and catch planet formation in action.

Black hole flees massive galaxy

Black Holes

Runaway Black Hole Flees Behemoth Galaxy

Astronomers have spotted a supermassive black hole in a stripped-down galaxy racing away from a near-fatal close encounter in the center of a galaxy cluster.

ALMA images triple protostar system

Stellar Science

ALMA Images Spiral Disk Around Baby Stars

Astronomers have imaged a third star embedded in the spiral disk around a pair of baby stars, the first direct evidence of a process of star formation known as disk fragmentation.

HI4PI maps Milky Way's neutral hydrogen

Galaxies

Astronomers Map Milky Way in Incredible Detail

Astronomers have mapped neutral atomic hydrogen, which profuses the space between stars, in unprecedented detail to create a beautiful radio-wavelength portrait of the Milky Way.

Centaurus A and a neighboring X-ray flash

Black Holes

Brilliant X-ray Flashes from Faraway Black Holes?

Two sources tens of millions of light-years away have sent puzzling X-ray flares blazing our way. Now astronomers think they might have the answer: intermediate-mass black holes.

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