Black Holes

Observations with NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer spacecraft have shed light on how particles are accelerated to nearly the speed of light in a blazar's jet.

An uncharted region of space known as the "zone of avoidance" lurks behind the Milky Way's center – and astronomers just found an enormous, multi-galaxy structure there.

A distant intermediate black hole has signaled its presence to researchers by blasting out intense radiation as it ripped apart an unfortunate star that wandered too close to it.

A black hole 10 times more massive than our sun lurks just 1,560 light-years from Earth — about twice as close as the previous proximity champ.

The X-ray binary system Cygnus X-1 is chomping on matter stolen from a companion star.

Black holes have properties characteristic of quantum particles, a new study reveals, suggesting that the puzzling cosmic objects can be at the same time heavy and light.

Dozens of telescopes all over the world are pointing at a patch of sky that gave rise to the most powerful gamma-ray burst ever seen, hoping to shed more light on processes that birth black holes.

A black hole at the heart of a distant galaxy is blasting a neighboring galaxy with a jet of plasma moving at near light speed.

A monster merger between two black holes sent ripples through time and space, and may prove Einstein right about a gravitational phenomenon called precession.

A black hole is burping out the remnants of a star it ripped apart and ate years ago in a type of tidal disruption event that is like nothing astronomers have ever seen.

NASA's iconic new observatory has spotted surprising compounds around supermassive black holes.

Black holes go boom in several ways.

Astronomers have spotted a hot spot orbiting Sagittarius A* that could be a gas bubble traveling at around 30% the speed of light.

Spanning more than a million light years from end to end, the jet shoots away from a black hole with enormous energy, and at almost the speed of light.

A small galaxy swallowed by a larger spiral galaxy deposited a supermassive black hole as it was violently ripped apart and consumed.

New research suggests that the expansion of the universe could be measured using colliding black holes as 'spectral sirens.'

The golden glowing ring of matter seen in the first-ever image of a black hole has been remastered, revealing the action of gravity around such cosmic titans.

A powerful and spectacular cosmic dance that began a billion years ago will lead to a collision and merger between two galaxies and the supermassive black holes at their hearts.

Scientists think that when dark photons collect around black holes, they can get trapped and boosted to high energies, where they might transform into other particles (or even just normal photons).

Astronomers hope to use pulsars scattered around the galaxy as a giant gravitational wave detector. But why do we need them, and how do they work?