Artist's impression of a black hole surrounded by swirling gas

Black Holes

Most Luminous Quasar Hosts What Might Be Fastest-Growing Black Hole

In a new study, astronomers have identified a quasar more luminous and voracious than any found to date.

Galaxy field containing distant quasar and 10 equally distant galaxies

Black Holes

JWST Turns Its Eye on Supermassive Black Holes and the Galaxies That Host Them

The intrepid infrared explorer is offering astronomers a jump back in time, enabling them to see quasars at earlier times than ever before.

OJ 287 binary black hole

Black Holes

Signal Found from Supermassive Duo's Second Black Hole

Astronomers have long suspected that a distant quasar harbors not one but two supermassive black holes. They've now detected OJ 287's second black hole.

AGN (art)

Cosmology

Hubble Image Reveals Possible Quasar Forerunner

A distant object in a deep Hubble Space Telescope field could be in transition from ordinary galaxy to brilliant beacon of light.

Black hole accretion disk

Black Holes

How Black Holes Eat Reveals Their Mass

No one knows why quasars flicker — but astronomers are using these wavering beacons to "weigh" the black holes that power them.

NGC 1365

Galaxies

Astronomers Use AI to Investigate Quasars and Galaxies Galore

New applications of machine learning have enabled astronomers to classify 27 million galaxies and pick out a dozen rare quadruply lensed quasars.

Most distant quasar

Black Holes

What the Most Distant Quasar Tells Us About Black Hole Birth

The existence of a quasar when the universe was only 670 million years old is helping astronomers understand how black holes are born.

illustration of active galaxy

The Black Hole Files with Camille Carlisle

Survey Finds Newborn Black Hole Jets in Distant Galaxies

Astronomers have spotted a surprising number of quasars with jets launched within a couple of decades.

Quasars as standard candles

Cosmology

What Quasars Can Teach Us About Dark Energy

Astronomers have found a way to turn quasars into standard candles, with potentially far-reaching implications for the nature of mysterious dark energy.

Quasar (art)

Black Holes

Astronomers Discover Most Distant Lensed Quasar

The most distant magnified quasar known promises to shed light on the universe's early years.

ALMA image of quasar merger

Astronomy & Observing News

60-Second Astro News: A Carnivorous Quasar and a Galaxy Ghost

In astronomy news this week: The most luminous quasar known in the cosmos is devouring three galaxy companions, while a newly discovered ghostly satellite of the Milky Way hints at hordes more just waiting to be found.

cosmic time and quasar

Galaxies

Most Distant Black Hole Yet

Astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole scarfing down gas just 690 million years after the Big Bang.

Quasar Footprint

Explore the Night with Bob King

Quasar CTA 102: Historically Bright, Violently Variable

The normally faint quasar CTA 102, once thought to harbor an advanced civilization and made famous in a 1967 song by the Byrds, is currently bright enough to see in an 8-inch telescope.  In the history of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, there have been two great false alarms.…

SDSS J1011+5442, the missing quasar

Black Holes

The Case of the Disappearing Quasar

When a quasar, a black hole-fueled beacons that shines from across the cosmos, went dark, astronomers set out to find out why.

Black Holes

Revealing Hidden Black Holes

The NuSTAR telescope has spied high-energy X-rays from five supermassive black holes shrouded in a thick veil of dust and gas, a test run that will lead to a better census of these hidden beasts.

Black Holes

Black Hole Too Big for its Breeches

A supermassive black hole in the early universe is at least 10 times too heavy for its host galaxy, raising questions about galaxy and black hole coevolution.

Black Holes

Best Evidence Yet That Black Holes Exist

A team of astronomers has found indirect evidence of a supermassive black hole’s event horizon, providing further proof that these wacky objects actually exist in nature.

NGC 5972 and the ghost of quasars past

Galaxies

Hubble Investigates Ghosts of Quasars Past

A galaxy-size blob of gas discovered eight years ago by a Dutch schoolteacher has galvanized the study of the spectral remains of once-bright quasars.

Black Holes

Watching a Quasar Shut Down

Over the course of ten years, a once-brilliant quasar seems to have stopped gobbling down nearby gas.

Black Holes

Black Hole Trio Questioned

New data shed light on last month’s exciting discovery of a black hole triplet — but they suggest instead that the threesome is really just a twosome.