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Keyword: quasar

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  • Brightest and fastest-growing: astronomers identify record-breaking quasar

    02/21/2024 7:03:26 PM PST · by Red Badger · 8 replies
    ESO ^ | 19 February 2024 | Staff
    Using the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have characterised a bright quasar, finding it to be not only the brightest of its kind, but also the most luminous object ever observed. Quasars are the bright cores of distant galaxies and they are powered by supermassive black holes. The black hole in this record-breaking quasar is growing in mass by the equivalent of one Sun per day, making it the fastest-growing black hole to date. The black holes powering quasars collect matter from their surroundings in a process so energetic that it emits vast amounts of light....
  • For The First Time Ever, Astronomers Have Detected Planets Outside Our Galaxy

    02/04/2018 11:03:53 PM PST · by Simon Green · 14 replies
    Science Alert ^ | 02/05/18 | MICHELLE STARR
    In an incredible world first, astrophysicists have detected multiple planets in another galaxy, ranging from masses as small as the Moon to ones as great as Jupiter. Given how difficult it is to find exoplanets even within our Milky Way galaxy, this is no mean feat. Researchers at the University of Oklahoma achieved this thanks to clever use of gravitational microlensing. The technique, first predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity, has been used to find exoplanets within Milky Way, and it's the only known way of finding the smallest and most distant planets, thousands of light-years from Earth. As...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - The Einstein Cross Gravitational Lens

    10/17/2021 2:16:06 PM PDT · by MtnClimber · 12 replies
    APOD.NASA.gov ^ | 17 Oct, 2021 | Image Credit & License: J. Rhoads (Arizona State U.) et al., WIYN, AURA, NOIRLab, NSF
    Explanation: Most galaxies have a single nucleus -- does this galaxy have four? The strange answer leads astronomers to conclude that the nucleus of the surrounding galaxy is not even visible in this image. The central cloverleaf is rather light emitted from a background quasar. The gravitational field of the visible foreground galaxy breaks light from this distant quasar into four distinct images. The quasar must be properly aligned behind the center of a massive galaxy for a mirage like this to be evident. The general effect is known as gravitational lensing, and this specific case is known as the...
  • What a Perfect Gravitational Lens

    09/02/2021 5:49:21 PM PDT · by LibWhacker · 17 replies
    Universe Today ^ | 8/30/2021 | NANCY ATKINSON
    What a Perfect Gravitational LensA stunning new photograph from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a nearly perfect Einstein Ring, an effect caused by gravitational lensing. This is one of the most complete Einstein Rings ever seen. Gravitational lenses occur when a massive object, such as a galaxy, is aligned directly between Earth and another massive object even farther away. Einstein predicted that gravity could bend light, and this image is a wonderful example of how gravity from foreground objects causes a deflection of light from background objects, forming a ring of light.In this case, it’s not just one foreground...
  • Most distant supermassive black hole known to science is detected by astronomers more than 13 BILLION light years from Earth

    01/12/2021 12:44:29 PM PST · by Red Badger · 41 replies
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk ^ | UPDATED: 13:40 EST, 12 January 2021 | By RYAN MORRISON
    Researchers used the ALMA telescope array in Chile to discover the quasar A quasar is a type of supermassive black hole that is releasing a lot of energy This object was discovered when the universe was just 670 million years old The discovery can help researchers better understand how these objects form Its age and size brings into doubt theories they were formed from collapsed star clusters, with researchers suggesting they instead feast on cold hydrogen gas =========================================================== The most distant supermassive black hole known to science has been detected by astronomers - and it is more than 13 billion...
  • Astronomers find far-flung wind from a black hole in the universe’s first light

    12/05/2018 7:07:24 AM PST · by ETL · 22 replies
    ScienceNews.com ^ | Dec 5, 2018 | Lisa Grossman
    Astronomer Mark Lacy and colleagues used the Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile to observe the universe’s first light, and found evidence of gusts flowing from a type of black hole called a quasar. The wind extends about 228,000 light-years away from the galaxy that surrounds the quasar. Previously, astronomers had seen signs of these winds only about 3,000 light-years from their galaxies.The result, published November 12 at arXiv.org, could help resolve questions about how black holes can grow with their galaxies, or shut galaxies down for good.Black holes are best known for gravitationally gobbling everything that veers too close....
  • Sprawling galaxy cluster found hiding in plain sight

    08/18/2018 5:42:48 PM PDT · by ETL · 31 replies
    MIT ^ | Aug 15, 2018 | Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office
    MIT scientists have uncovered a sprawling new galaxy cluster hiding in plain sight. The cluster, which sits a mere 2.4 billion light years from Earth, is made up of hundreds of individual galaxies and surrounds an extremely active supermassive black hole, or quasar. The central quasar goes by the name PKS1353-341 and is intensely bright — so bright that for decades astronomers observing it in the night sky have assumed that the quasar was quite alone in its corner of the universe, shining out as a solitary light source from the center of a single galaxy. But as the MIT...
  • Astronomers find fastest-growing black hole known in space

    05/15/2018 1:58:52 PM PDT · by Red Badger · 28 replies
    phys.org ^ | May 15, 2018 | Australian National University
    A bright, supermassive black hole. Credit: NASA ______________________________________________________________________________ Astronomers at ANU have found the fastest-growing black hole known in the Universe, describing it as a monster that devours a mass equivalent to our sun every two days. The astronomers have looked back more than 12 billion years to the early dark ages of the Universe, when this supermassive black hole was estimated to be the size of about 20 billion suns with a one per cent growth rate every one million years. "This black hole is growing so rapidly that it's shining thousands of times more brightly than an...
  • Quasar Found 420 Trillion Times Brighter Than Our Sun

    07/29/2016 3:23:48 PM PDT · by blam · 49 replies
    Astronomy Trek ^ | 2016 | Astro Trek
    Quasar Found 420 Trillion Times Brighter Than Our SunAn international team of astronomers have discovered a huge quasar 420 trillion times brighter than our sun around 12.8 billion light years away from Earth, placing its formation around 875 million years after the big bang. The ancient object is powered by a massive black hole and contains a staggering 12 billion solar masses, surprising scientists who had not expected such a huge bright quasar so close to the dawn of time. The quasar was found using telescopes located in China, Hawaii, Arizona, and Chile, and as Xue-Bing Wu, of Peking...
  • Astrophysicists detect ultra-fast winds near supermassive black hole

    03/24/2016 12:44:16 PM PDT · by Red Badger · 22 replies
    phys.org ^ | March 21, 2016 | Provided by: York University
    Artist's illustration of turbulent winds of gas swirling around a black hole. Some of the gas is spiraling inward, but some is being blown away. Credit: NASA, and M. Weiss (Chandra X -ray Center) ============================================================================================================================================== New research led by astrophysicists at York University has revealed the fastest winds ever seen at ultraviolet wavelengths near a supermassive black hole. "We're talking wind speeds of 20 per cent the speed of light, which is more than 200 million kilometres an hour. That's equivalent to a category 77 hurricane," says Jesse Rogerson, who led the research as part of his PhD thesis in...
  • Clocking the Extreme Spin of a Monster Black Hole

    03/17/2016 6:36:54 PM PDT · by MtnClimber · 24 replies
    D-News ^ | 15 Mar, 2016 | IAN O'NEILL
    upermassive black holes are the most extreme objects in the known universe, with masses millions or even billions of times the mass of our sun. Now astronomers have been able to study one of these behemoths inside a strange, distant quasar and they’ve made an astonishing discovery — it’s spinning one-third the speed of light. Studying a supermassive black hole some 3.5 billion light-years away is no easy feat, but this isn’t a regular object: it’s a quasar that shows quasi-periodic brightening events every 12 years or so — a fact that has helped astronomers reveal its extreme nature. Quasars...
  • More Evidence for Coming Black Hole Collision (total mass > a billion suns)

    09/22/2015 9:34:46 AM PDT · by LibWhacker · 49 replies
    NYTimes ^ | 9/16/15 | Dennis Overbye
    The apocalypse is still on, apparently — at least in a galaxy about 3.5 billion light-years from here. Last winter, a team of Caltech astronomers reported that two supermassive black holes appeared to be spiraling together toward a cataclysmic collision that could bring down the curtains in that galaxy. The evidence was a rhythmic flickering from the galaxy’s nucleus, a quasar known as PG 1302-102, which Matthew Graham and his colleagues interpreted as the fatal mating dance of a pair of black holes with a total mass of more than a billion suns. Their merger, the astronomers calculated, could release...
  • NASA’s Hubble Finds Giant Halo Around the Andromeda Galaxy

    05/09/2015 6:27:38 AM PDT · by BenLurkin · 25 replies
    nasa ^ | Rob Gutro
    Scientists using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that the immense halo of gas enveloping the Andromeda galaxy, our nearest massive galactic neighbor, is about six times larger and 1,000 times more massive than previously measured. The dark, nearly invisible halo stretches about a million light-years from its host galaxy, halfway to our own Milky Way galaxy. This finding promises to tell astronomers more about the evolution and structure of majestic giant spirals, one of the most common types of galaxies in the universe. “Halos are the gaseous atmospheres of galaxies. The properties of these gaseous halos control the rate...
  • Black hole 12bn times more massive than sun is discovered

    02/28/2015 10:32:14 AM PST · by Ernest_at_the_Beach · 60 replies
    theguardian.com ^ | Feb 25, 2015 | Press Association
    Scientists name new ‘object’ SDSS J0100+2802 and say it is 12.8bn light years from Earth and was formed just 900m years after the Big Bang *************************************************************A monster black hole powering “the brightest lighthouse in the distant universe” has been discovered that is 12bn times more massive than the sun, scientists have revealed.The extraordinary object is at the centre of a quasar - an intensely powerful galactic radiation source - with a million billion times the sun’s energy output.For years the nature of quasars, discovered in 1963, remained a mystery. Today scientists believe they are generated by matter heating up as...
  • Monster Black Hole Is the Largest and Brightest Ever Found

    02/26/2015 5:24:51 AM PST · by C19fan · 27 replies
    Space.com ^ | February 25, 2015 | Charles Q. Choi
    Astronomers have discovered the largest and most luminous black hole ever seen — an ancient monster with a mass about 12 billion times that of the sun — that dates back to when the universe was less than 1 billion years old. It remains a mystery how black holes could have grown so huge in such a relatively brief time after the dawn of the universe, researchers say.
  • This quasar should not exist -- and yet it does

    11/09/2013 11:07:04 PM PST · by SunkenCiv · 10 replies
    io9 ^ | November 9th, 2013 | George Dvorsky
    Astronomers from York University in Canada have identified an undocumented type of quasar where gas appears to be getting sucked into a black hole. This may not sound surprising, but current theories say that isn't supposed to happen. Quasars are hyperactive and extremely bright discs of hot gas that surround supermassive black holes. They're also known as galactic nucleuses. The Milky Way has one at its center. All the junk that's rapidly spinning down the drain hole forms a compact disc with a radius that's larger than Earth's orbit around the Sun and a temperature that's hotter than the surface...
  • MONSTER QUASAR BLAST blows stunned astro boffins' WIGS OFF

    11/28/2012 2:18:51 PM PST · by Ernest_at_the_Beach · 22 replies
    The Register ^ | 28th November 2012 16:40 GMT | Kelly Fiveash, Networks Correspondent
    Physics boffins have discovered a dying galaxy whose black hole core has emitted the biggest burst of energy ever to be found by scientists. Researchers at Virginia Tech in the US examined the record-breaking quasar, dubbed SDSS J1106+1939, using a colossal telescope in Paranal, Chile to observe what they described as a "monster outflow". They explained that the rate at which energy was carried away by the lusty mass of material ejected was equivalent to two trillion times the power output of the sun. "This is about 100 times higher than the total power output of the Milky Way galaxy,"...
  • Brilliant, But Distant: Most Far-Flung Known Quasar Offers Glimpse Into Early Universe

    07/31/2011 8:36:55 AM PDT · by blam · 22 replies
    Scientific American ^ | 7-29-2011 | John Matson
    Brilliant, But Distant: Most Far-Flung Known Quasar Offers Glimpse into Early UniverseA gargantuan black hole has been spotted voraciously devouring material just 770 million years after the big bangBy John Matson June 29, 2011 GLOWING GOBBLER: An artist's conception of a quasar ionizing the hydrogen gas surrounding it.Image: Gemini Observatory Peering far across space and time, astronomers have located a luminous beacon aglow when the universe was still in its infancy. That beacon, a bright astrophysical object known as a quasar, shines with the luminosity of 63 trillion suns as gas falling into a supermassive black holes compresses, heats up...
  • Mysterious radio waves emitted from nearby galaxy

    04/14/2010 2:55:48 PM PDT · by TaraP · 72 replies · 2,406+ views
    New Scientist ^ | April 14th, 2010
    There is something strange in the cosmic neighbourhood. An unknown object in the nearby galaxy M82 has started sending out radio waves, and the emission does not look like anything seen anywhere in the universe before. "We don't know what it is," says co-discoverer Tom Muxlow of Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics near Macclesfield, UK. The thing appeared in May last year, while Muxlow and his colleagues were monitoring an unrelated stellar explosion in M82 using the MERLIN network of radio telescopes in the UK. A bright spot of radio emission emerged over only a few days, quite rapidly in...
  • Mysterious New Object Discovered in Space

    04/19/2010 6:20:26 PM PDT · by KevinDavis · 29 replies · 962+ views
    space.com ^ | 04/19/10 | Charles Q. Choi
    A strange and mysterious new object in space may the brightest and long-lasting "micro-quasar" seen thus far, a miniature version of the brightest objects in the universe. The object suddenly began pumping out radio waves last year in the relatively nearby galaxy M82, some 10 million light-years away. Its discovery was announced Tuesday. "The new object, which appeared in May 2009, has left us scratching our heads — we've never seen anything quite like this before," said researcher Tom Muxlow, a radio astronomer at the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory in England.