supermassive black holes

clouds around supermassive black hole
Why are black holes surrounded by a haze of eerie clouds, and do they eat them?
Elizabeth Rayne
Trending on SYFY WIRE in supermassive black holes
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A huge black hole eats a huger black hole's dinner then explodes with the light of a trillion suns
Phil Plait
Artwork (not to scale) depicting the binary black hole in the heart of the blazar OJ 287. The less massive black hole plunges through the accretion disk around the more massive black hole, creating a huge bubble of superheated gas. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltec
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A distant quasar has the most powerful wind ever seen. And yeah, it's a doozy.
Phil Plait
Apr 20, 2020
Artwork depicting the central black hole and accretion disk powering a quasar. Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Marenfeld
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Einstein's hand reaches out from a black hole and torques a star's orbit
Phil Plait
Apr 17, 2020
Artwork depicting (exaggerated) orbital precession of a star orbiting a black hole; every time it approaches the orientation of the orbit shifts. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada
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Down the mouth of a monster: Event Horizon Telescope stares down a blazar's jet
Phil Plait
Apr 8, 2020
Artist drawing of a blazar, a galaxy with a supermassive black hole spewing out energy. Credit: DESY, Science Communication Lab
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What's the last thing you'd see as you fell into a black hole?
Phil Plait
Mar 20, 2020
The path of light around a black hole gets severely distorted by gravity. In this diagram, the Earth is off to the right, and light from material behind the black hole gets bent toward us, leaving a “hole” where the black hole itself is.
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Record-breaking blazar found 12.8 *billion* light years from Earth
Phil Plait
Mar 9, 2020
Artist drawing of a blazar, a galaxy with a supermassive black hole spewing out energy. Credit: DESY, Science Communication Lab
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Supermassive black hole blasted the biggest explosion ever
Elizabeth Rayne
Feb 29, 2020
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Astronomers find a star dive-bombing our galaxy's supermassive black hole
Phil Plait
Feb 12, 2020
A simulation showing the positions and orbits of stars orbiting the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/spaceengine.org
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In dwarf galaxies, a black hole wind is rising
Phil Plait
Jan 27, 2020
Black hole with accretion disk and jets
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Weird dust clouds orbiting our galaxy’s central black hole may be weirder than we thought
Phil Plait
Jan 16, 2020
Artwork depicting dust clouds with stars embedded in them orbiting Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way. Credit: Jack Ciurlo
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Three supermassive black holes? In the galactic chaos of NGC 6240, ALMA sees just two
Phil Plait
Jan 14, 2020
Artwork depicting the chaos of galactic collision: NGC 6240 is two galaxies colliding, each with their own supermassive black hole surrounded by huge amounts of gas. Credit: Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. Dagnello
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Dwarf galaxies have supermassive black holes, too… and some are off-center!
Phil Plait
Jan 8, 2020
Artwork depicting a dwarf galaxy, distorted by a previous galactic collisions, with a supermassive black hole in its suburbs. Credit: Sophia Dagnello, NRAO/AUI/NSF
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The care and feeding of baby supermassive black holes
Phil Plait
Jan 7, 2020
In this piece of art, an active galaxy called a quasar blasts out energy and matter in two jets which blow matter away from it. However, it’s also surrounded by a huge halo of gas (blue) that can fall toward the center.
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So, about that 'too massive' black hole… yeah, not so much.
Phil Plait
Dec 11, 2019
Artist’s depiction of a blue star orbiting a black hole… except this depiction for the purported 70 solar mass black hole is incorrect. That gas orbits the whole system. Credit: Jingchuan Yu / Beijing Planetarium (modified by Phil Plait)
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A galaxy with *three* supermassive black hole hearts
Phil Plait
Dec 10, 2019
hst_ngc6240_bigNGC 6240, a relatively nearby galactic collision. Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University)
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