Milky

The Milky Way’s black hole flickers and flares

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Milky Way's black hole: Illustration of a black hole with flares of light around the disk.

This artist’s concept portrays the Milky Way‘s black hole. This supermassive black hole sits at the core of our galaxy and goes by the name of Sagittarius A* (A-star). It’s surrounded by a swirling accretion disk of hot gas. The black hole’s gravity bends light from the far side of the disk, making it appear … Read more

James Webb Space Telescope finds our Milky Way galaxy’s supermassive black hole blowing bubbles (image, video)

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an orange-and-yellow orb on a black-and-blue mottled background

The black hole at the heart of our galaxy is a real party animal, endlessly blowing cosmic bubbles. The findings aren’t frivolous at all and could help us better understand how black holes interact with their environments and help galaxies evolve. Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scientists discovered that the Milky Way’s central … Read more

Speediest exoplanet found near Milky Way center?

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Hundreds of stars in space, many of them with short trails behind them. A bright one has a long red trail.

View larger. | Artist’s visualization of stars near the center of the Milky Way. The longer the trail of each star, the faster it is moving. Scientists have discovered what might be the speediest exoplanet system yet. It’s depicted with a long bright trail at center. Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ R. Hurt (Caltech-IPAC). Stars move … Read more

There Could Be a Supermassive Black Hole in the Large Magellanic Cloud Hurling Stars at the Milky Way

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Hypervelocity stars (HVSs) were first theorized to exist in the late 1980s. In 2005, the first discoveries were confirmed. HVSs travel much faster than normal stars, and sometimes, they can exceed the galactic escape velocity. Astronomers estimate that the Milky Way contains about 1,000 HVSs, and new research shows that some of these originate in … Read more

‘Missing link’ black hole in the Milky Way’s densest star cluster is still missing

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New research may have delivered bad news for scientists who thought they had discovered a “missing link” black hole in a dense Milky Way star cluster. The new findings imply that, rather than a rare intermediate-mass black hole, there is a cluster of stellar-mass black holes in Omega Centauri, believed to be the remains of … Read more

Binary star system finally discovered near Milky Way center

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This image gazes toward the heart of the Milky Way, in the direction of its core. Credit: ESO/S. Guisard (www.eso.org/~sguisard) Veiled in gas and clouds, the Milky Way’s center does not easily give up secrets. The initial detection of its supermassive black hole (SMBH) decades ago posed as many riddles as it solved, including the … Read more