European Association for Astronomy Education

Source: NASA/SWIFT

Data from an ongoing survey by NASA’s Swift satellite have helped astronomers solve a decades-long mystery about why a small percentage of black holes emit vast amounts of energy.

Only about one percent of supermassive black holes exhibit this behavior. The new findings confirm that black holes “light up” when galaxies collide, and the data may offer insight into the future behavior of the black hole in our own Milky Way galaxy. The study will appear in the June 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The intense emission from galaxy centers, or nuclei, arises near a supermassive black hole containing between a million and a billion times the sun’s mass. Giving off as much as 10 billion times the sun’s energy, some of these active galactic nuclei (AGN) are the most luminous objects in the universe. They include quasars and blazars. (read more)

Source:ESO News Release 04/10

Artist’s impression about the black hole inside NGC 300 X-1. Credit: ESO/L.Calçada.

Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope have detected, in another galaxy, a stellar-mass black hole much farther away than any other previously known. With a mass above fifteen times that of the Sun, this is also the second most massive stellar-mass black hole ever found. It is entwined with a star that will soon become a black hole itself. (read more)

Source: Chandra@Harvard

Supermassive black hole Sgr A* and its surrounding region.
Credit: NASA/CXC/MIT/F. Baganoff, R. Shcherbakov et al.

Astronomers have long known that the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, known as Sagittarius A* (or Sgr A* for short), is a particularly poor eater. (read more)

Related Links:
Chandra at NASA

Source: Space Daily

An image of the galaxy COSMOS J100043.15+020637.2 taken with
the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the Hubble Space Telescope.
Credit: NASA/ESA/HST.

Astronomers have discovered 33 pairs of waltzing black holes in distant galaxies. This result were presented by Dr. Julia Comerford of the University of California, Berkeley, to the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, DC.(read more)

Related links:
Universe Today

Source: ESO 46/09 – Science Release