News tagged with massive galaxy

The wild early lives of today's most massive galaxies

(PhysOrg.com) -- Using the APEX telescope, a team of astronomers has found the strongest link so far between the most powerful bursts of star formation in the early Universe, and the most massive galaxies ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Jan 25, 2012 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (5) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

A 'Rose' made of galaxies

(PhysOrg.com) -- In celebration of the twenty-first anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's deployment in April 2011, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute pointed Hubble's eye to an especially ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Dec 21, 2011 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (8) | comments 0

Disaster looms for gas cloud falling into Milky Way's central black hole

The normally quiet neighborhood around the massive black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy is being invaded by a gas cloud that is destined in just a few years to be ripped, shredded and largely eaten.

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Dec 14, 2011 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (11) | comments 55 | with audio podcast

The Tarantula glows with X-rays and infrared light

(PhysOrg.com) -- This spiderweb-like tangle of gas and dust is a star-forming region called 30 Doradus. It is one of the largest such regions located close to the Milky Way galaxy, and is found in the neighboring ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Nov 11, 2011 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (2) | comments 4

Is M85 missing a black hole?

The conventional wisdom of galaxies is that they should have a central massive black hole (CMBH). The presence of such objects has been confirmed in our own galaxy as well as numerous other galaxies, including ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Oct 17, 2011 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (5) | comments 5

Clearing the cosmic fog of the early universe: Massive stars may be responsible

The space between the galaxies wasn't always transparent. In the earliest times, it was an opaque, dense fog. How it cleared is an important question in astronomy. New observational evidence from the University ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Oct 12, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (5) | comments 5 | with audio podcast

Suspects in the quenching of star formation exonerated

Supermassive black holes millions to billions times the mass of our Sun lie at the heart of most, maybe all large galaxies. Some of these power brilliantly luminous, rapidly growing objects called active galactic nuclei that ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Oct 11, 2011 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (5) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Small distant galaxies host supermassive black holes

(PhysOrg.com) -- Using the Hubble Space Telescope to probe the distant universe, astronomers have found supermassive black holes growing in surprisingly small galaxies. The findings suggest that central black ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Sep 15, 2011 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (10) | comments 28 | with audio podcast

The central region of the Milky Way

(PhysOrg.com) -- The center of our Milky Way galaxy is about 27,000 light-years away in the direction of the constellation of Sagittarius. At the very center of the galaxy lies a black hole whose mass is about ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Aug 15, 2011 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (21) | comments 19 | with audio podcast

A star is torn

A University of Sydney researcher was part of an international team of astronomers that has observed an incredibly rare event that occurs once every 10,000 years per galaxy.

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Aug 08, 2011 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (21) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

The Milky Way's supermassive black hole

Supermassive black holes - objects with masses of millions or even billions of suns - are found at the nuclei of galaxies. Our Milky Way galaxy, for example, has a massive black hole at its core, albeit one ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Aug 08, 2011 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (8) | comments 14 | with audio podcast

INTEGRAL observations suggest unified model for Active Galactic Nuclei requires a rethink

Scrutinizing a large sample of Active Galactic Nuclei with INTEGRAL, astronomers have found that, unexpectedly, sources affected by stronger absorption at lower energies show an excess emission in the hard ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Aug 03, 2011 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (5) | comments 16 | with audio podcast

Pan-STARRS discovers two super supernovae

Supernovae are the brightest phenomenon in the current universe. As massive stars die as supernovae, they briefly outshine the rest of the stars in their galaxy and are visible, at least once the light gets ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Jul 22, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 1

Spitzer finds distant galaxies grazed on gas

(PhysOrg.com) -- Galaxies once thought of as voracious tigers are more like grazing cows, according to a new study using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Jun 30, 2011 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (5) | comments 5 | with audio podcast

Measuring galaxy black hole masses

(PhysOrg.com) -- Black holes, one of the most amazing and bizarre predictions of Einstein's theory of gravity, are irresistible sinks for matter and energy. They are so dense that not even light can escape ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created May 27, 2011 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (5) | comments 5