Spirals are a repeating theme in astronomy, with arguably the most famous example of a swirling armed structure being our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Now, using a powerful NASA supercomputer called “Pleiades,” scientists have discovered yet another spiral structure on the edge of our solar system. The spiral is composed of billions of icy … Read more
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
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