Stories tagged galaxy

Spiral galaxy M81: The black hole in the center of this galaxy is 70 million times as massive as the Sun, but it behaves exactly the same as much, much smaller black holes.
Courtesy X-ray: NASA/CXC/Wisconsin/D.Pooley & CfA/A.Zezas; Optical: NASA/ESA/CfA/A.Zezas; UV: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CfA/J.Huchra et al.; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CfA

This may fall under the heading of small comfort, but a new study has shown that all black holes, big or small, suck in matter in the same way. Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory, astronomers studied the different types of light (X-ray, radio and visible) emanating from the region around a massive black hole in the center of galaxy M81. They found that this light was the same as light coming from smaller black holes, even though this one is some 10 million times bigger, and is sucking in matter from a different source. This confirms a part of Einstein’s theory of relativity, which predicted that black holes would be fairly simple objects, not subject to a lot of variation. Which doesn’t really help much if you find yourself getting sucked in, but at least you know it’s nothing personal.

You can learn more about Chandra and X-ray astronomy in our Be an Astronomer! web exhibit. And you can ask questions of Megan Donahue, a scientist who work with the Chandra observatory.

Tags : X-rays, light, galaxy, chandra, black holes, astronomy

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Galactic glue: Are supermassive black holes holding our galaxies together? That's the conclusion many astronomers are coming to as they study these huge, massive sites at the core of many galaxies. (Photo courtesy of NASA)The black hole: our metaphor du joir to describe something that completely sucks up another thing.

But new research is re-examining black holes and the impact they play in space. Not only are they sucking up old space materials, but they may be spitting out new galactic bodies and holding complete galaxies together.

UCLA astronomer Andrea Ghez is at the hub of this new research. Using some of the most technically advanced telescopic equipment available, for four years she’s been watching and reporting on new black hole phenomena. And she may have uncovered a new, more powerful type of black hole, the “supermassive” black hole.

She and others who are studying the same things now postulate that most of the universe’s galaxies have “supermassive” black holes at their center. These mega-black holes have gravitational fields that are hundreds of thousands of times stronger than the conventional black hole.

While research for a long time has chronicled how regular black holes can eat up stars, planets and even light, the new supermassive black holes might also be celestial body creators. Just like what often happens to us after eating a big meal, these super-sized black holes belch out jets of energized particles and radiation over a distance of millions of light years, creating new galaxies and celestial bodies.

If your sitting there starting to feel a mysterious uncomfortable tug on you, don’t worry. Here in the Milky Way it’s believed we have a very small, dormant supermassive black hole holding our galaxy together. It’s about 27,000 light years away from us and is relatively small, having the mass of about 4 millions suns. And there’s no evidence that it is spewing out any jets of radiation and energy particles.

More on supermassive black holes

Tags : space, galaxy, black holes, galaxy clusters, supermassive black holes

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Orion Nebula: Image courtesy NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team

Orion Nebula 2: Image courtesy NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Personally, I think the Hubble Space Telescope is incredible — the images it captures fascinate me. These images of the Orion Nebula were just recently released, and if you're into images from space, or just think these are cool, visit the media site and look at the larger resolution and magnified images they have available there, as well as the detail images with description. The level of detail is amazing. Totally gets my imagination going. Here is the press release on the image as well.

Tags : space, Hubble, nebula, galaxy

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