Black Hole

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These flares are bright enough to shine across 26,000 light-years of space. By Elisha Sauers Elisha Sauers writes about space for Mashable, taking deep dives into NASA's moon and Mars missions, chatting up astronauts and history-making discoverers, and jetting above the clouds. Through 17 years of reporting, she's covered a…

NASA’s Webb Telescope Reveals a Never-Ending Cosmic Firestorm at the Center of the Milky Way  SciTechDailyWhy are 'fireworks' coming from a black hole? This is what scientists say  NPRAstronomers spot flares of light near the black hole at the center of our galaxy  CNNJames Webb Telescope Reveals a Dazzling Light Show From the…

An illustration shows a spinning black hole (Image credit: Robert Lea (created with Canva)) Black holes may leak more energy to their surroundings than previously suspected — and the faster these voids spin, the more efficient this energy extraction seems to be. With this in mind, a team of scientists…

This artist's concept shows Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, surrounded by a swirling accretion disk of hot gas. Flaring hot spots that resemble solar flares are seen in the disk. NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)/NASA.gov hide caption toggle caption NASA,…

An artist's illustration of three black holes. (Image credit: Shutterstock) Astronomers have used the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) to discover a treasure trove of black holes, many of which are rare "missing links" in the cosmic monsters' evolution. The search, which swept across 410,000 galaxies, identified a staggering 2,500…

Astronomers using the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) on NSF’s Nicholas U. Mayall 4-m telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, a program of the NOIRLab, have compiled the largest sample ever of dwarf galaxies that host an actively feeding black hole, as well as the most extensive collection of intermediate-mass…

Scientists using the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) have completed two major tasks. They’ve compiled the largest ever sample of dwarf galaxies (systems contain up to a mere several billion stars, compared to the Milky Way’s estimated 2 billion to 400 billion) that host an actively feeding black hole. They’ve…

The accretion disk orbiting Sagittarius A* is emitting a constant stream of flares with no periods of rest, according to an analysis of new data from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope; while some flares are faint flickers, lasting mere seconds, other flares are blindingly bright eruptions, which spew daily;…

Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have taken a detailed look at the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way, called Sagittarius A*. They found that the swirling disk of gas and dust around it constantly emits flares. These flares vary in brightness and duration:…