The tag team of NASA space telescopes Hubble and Chandra has demonstrated that two is definitely better than one when it comes to pairings of supermassive black holes and hunting for them.
By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — Two telescopes have spotted the closest pair of supermassive black holes to date. The duo, only about 300 light-years apart, were observed in different wavelengths of light using NASA’s Chandra X-ray…
Cores of Two Galaxies Are on a Collision Course For all practical purposes, stars traveling across space never smash into each other. The ratio between a starlike sun’s diameter and its distance to the next neighboring star is about 1:10…
Like two Sumo wrestlers squaring off, the closest confirmed pair of supermassive black holes have been observed in tight proximity. These are located approximately 300 light-years apart and were detected using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope…
Researchers have discovered compelling evidence suggesting that the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), is likely the result of a past cosmic merger. The study builds on recent…
The origins of aptly named supermassive black holes—which can weigh in at more than a million times the mass of the sun and reside in the center of most galaxies—remain one of the great mysteries of the cosmos.
It takes a long time for supermassive black holes, like the one at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, to form. Typically, the birth of a black hole requires a giant star with the mass of at least 50 of our suns to burn out - a process…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) keeps finding supermassive black holes (SMBH) in the early Universe. They’re in active galactic nuclei seen only 500,000 years after the Big Bang. This was long before astronomers thought they could…
Radiation from dark matter in the early universe may have kept hydrogen gas hot enough to condense into black holes. Supermassive black holes typically take billions of years to form. But the James Webb Space Telescope is finding them not…
Supermassive black holes typically take billions of years to form. But the James Webb Space Telescope is finding them not that long after the Big Bang -- before they should have had time to form. Astrophysicists have discovered that if…
It takes a long time for supermassive black holes, like the one at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, to form. Typically, the birth of a black hole requires a giant star with the mass of at least 50 of our suns to burn out—a process that…
UGC 3478, featured in this Hubble Space Telescope image, is a Seyfert galaxy characterized by its bright active galactic nucleus containing a supermassive black hole. Located relatively close at 128 million light-years, its emitted X-rays…