... The Cloudy Cores of Active Galaxies . ... Credit Copyright: NASA's GSFC , W. Steffen ( UNAM ) Explanation: What would it look like to travel to the center of an active galaxy? Most galactic centers are thought to house black hole s millions of times more massive than our Sun. ... Publications with keywords: Galactic Center . Publications with words: Galactic Center . ... A Laser Strike at the Galactic Center . ... The Diner at the Center of the Galaxy . Kona Galaxy Garden . ...

... Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2012 December 5 . Plasma Jets from Radio Galaxy Hercules A . ... The galaxy at the image center , Hercules A, appears to be a relatively normal elliptical galaxy in visible light. When imaged in radio waves , however, tremendous plasma jets over one million light years long appear. ... About APOD | ...

... Resembling a gigantic hubcap in space, a 3,700 light-year-diameter dust disk encircles a 300 million solar-mass black hole in the center of the elliptical galaxy NGC 7052. ... Because the front end of the disk eclipses more stars than the back, it appears darker. ... Despite its size, the disk is 100 times less massive than the black hole. ... The bright spot in the center of the disk is the combined light of stars that have crowded around the black hole due to its strong gravitational pull. ...

Is the violent behavior of quasars caused by black holes in galaxies? If so, does the discovery of black holes in the centers of many normal galaxies mean that all galaxies were once quasars? ... If this is the case, then normal galaxies should still have massive black holes in their nuclei, like quasars, but these black holes should now be starved of fuel. ... What we do not yet know is what fraction of all normal galaxies once passed through a quasar phase. ... Scientific American. ...

... Feeding the Monster: Gas Caught in its Death Spiral into a Massive Black Hole . ... Stromlo Professor Mike Dopita have used the Hubble Space Telescope to discover how a massive Black Hole in a nearby galaxy feeds itself. ... Earlier Hubble Telescope data obtained by another team member, Professor Holland Ford of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, had found a disk of gas rushing around the Black Hole at a speed of 500 kilometers a second. ...

... Astronomy news . ... NASA's Spitzer Images Out-of-This-World Galaxy . ... It is spiral-shaped like our Milky Way, with long, spindly arms of stars. The "eye" at the center of the galaxy is actually a monstrous black hole surrounded by a ring of stars. In this color-coded infrared view from Spitzer, the area around the invisible black hole is blue and the ring of stars, white. ... The ring around the black hole is bursting with new star formation. ...

... Tonight's Sky . ... Sky this Month . ... Astronomy for Kids . ... Hubble sees NGC 7090 т?? an active star-forming galaxy . ... This image portrays a beautiful view of the galaxy NGC 7090, as seen by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. ... This image portrays a beautiful view of galaxy NGC 7090, as seen by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. ... These structures trace the location of ongoing star formation, visual confirmation of recent studies that classify NGC 7090 as an active star-forming...

... Our Sun is part of a huge wheel-shaped collection of stars. ... Astronomers have long suspected it was a very massive black hole, and that every galaxy had such a central mass, created early in the history of the universe. ... However, unless that object happens to be headed directly at the black hole (a relatively small target) it will just swing around and fly away again, like a comet making a pass at the Sun. The velocity acquired in falling towards the black hole also helps it escape. ...

You might wonder how a black hole could be found if nothing including light can escape from it. ... HDE 226868 is a massive blue supergiant star; its companion is believed to be a black hole, surrounded by an accretion disc of gases from HDE 226868 which are spiraling into the black hole. ... Three other objects -- LMC X-3 in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, and A0620-00 and V404 Cygni in our galaxy -- are also believed to have black holes as one of their components. ...

The black hole (BH) masses in the centers of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) have been estimated for a sample of radio-selected, flat-spectrum quasars to investigate the relationship between BH mass and radio properties of quasars. ... In contrast to previous studies, we find no correlation between BH mass and radio power in these AGNs. We find a range in BH mass similar to that seen in radio-quiet quasars from previous studies. ... You can now find me in room 99 at Epping. ...

... 2002) Coordinated fueling: nearby AGN hosts Narrowline AGN hosts in SDSS: high M* and * but "black" rum younger stellar ages (not just in nucleus!) coordinated fueling of star formation and light rum accretion is key. ... Vermeulen et al. (2003): 33% of radioloud AGN (z < 0.8) show HI absorption features, more frequently (and more highly) blueshifted than redshifted. ... HI absorption against radioloud AGN traces a mixture of infall, outflow, and rotation; key fuel may be hot gas. ...

... Galileo was one of the first to study our Milky Way with a telescope in 1610 and he discovered that it was composed of a huge number of faint stars. ... Image Credit: NASA Elliptical Galaxy This image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows a good example of an elliptical galaxy at the centre of a galaxy cluster that is over 450 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Centaurus. ... Then the Andromeda galaxy was first classed as a galaxy outside of our own Milky Way. ...

... Bad Astronomy . ... Bitesize Astronomy . ... Last week's Snack talked about how black holes can affect the environment around them in such a way as to be very bright . ... It's a common misconception that black holes always have matter swirling into them. ... As this matter gets closer and closer to the black hole it piles up and a large, fairly flat disk forms. This is called the accretion disk , because matter from this disk accretes (that is, falls in) on the black hole. ... 2008 Phil Plait. ...

What happens to a star heavier than five solar masses? ... Stars about ten solar masses probably behave like our five solar mass star until they reach the end of core-helium burning. ... The Crab nebula was formed after a massive explosion ripped a star apart in 1054. ... Today, the glowing outer layers of the star are still rushing away from a tiny star in the centre. ... An incredible explosion rips through the outer layers of the star, releasing colossal amounts of energy in a supernova explosion. ...

... The hot component shows very spectacular activity: irregular outbursts accompanied by fast, massive outflows and jets. ... Diffraction-limited images for both components of CH Cyg binary system were reconstructed using visible speckle interferometry at BTA 6-m telescope (Fig.1). The orbital period 15.6 years and masses: 2.0 Msun and 0.7 Msun for red giant and white dwarf, respectively were derived from angular distance (0.042") and magnitude difference (2 m ) of the components. ... Fig.1. ...

... This thread contains a step-by-step recipe to extract EPIC (pn will be used as an example) light-curves of a point-like source, starting from a calibrated, concatenated event list (either produced with epproc or available as PPS product; it will bear the name: PN.fits in this thread). The content of this thread is the same as Extraction of a X-ray light curve for a point-like source (command-line version). ... in the lccorr GUI window (see Fig.7) define at least the following widgets: . ...

... Jets from Black Holes in Active Galactic Nuclei . Dr. Alan Marscher, Boston University . ... He is the leader of the Blazar Research Group (http:/www.bu.edu/blazars) in the Institute for Astrophysical Research (http:/www.bu.edu/iar) at Boston U. Dr. Marscher composes folk/pop songs in both English and Russian. ... Please join us for a pre-meeting dinner discussion at Changsho, 1712 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA at 6:00pm before the meeting. ... Copyright (c) Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston, Inc. ...

... Science . ... Science Users Information > Science and Technical Meetings > Conferences 2010 > Central Massive Objects: The Stellar Nuclei - Black Hole Connection . ... Science Users Information . ... Observing with ESO Telescopes . ... Science Software . ... ESO Science Newsletter . ... An ESO workshop for observers and theorists to discuss recent progress in our understanding of the formation and evolution of black holes and star clusters in the centres of galaxies and their connection to each...

Within the Hubble Ultra Deep Field there are approximately 10,000 discrete objects. ... Most of these objects are very small and likely have masses in the range of 10 5 to 10 7 solar masses. Note the mass of the Milky Way galaxy is 10 12 solar masses. ... Finally, for you cosmologists/experts out there this ultra deep field is quite consistent with what was seen in the original Hubble Deep Field 5) don't necessarily have small angular diameters. ...

... Image Quality of the VLT . Total Optical Control . First light for the ESO VLT unit telescope 1 occurred during the workshop. ... The image shown (Figure 1 ) here was obtained with the VLT on May 16, 1998, in red light (R band), i.e. while the mirror was still uncoated. ... In this diagram (FIgure 2), the measured image quality of the VLT UT1 astronomical images is plotted versus the ``seeing", as measured by the Seeing Monitor, a small telescope also located on top of the Paranal Mountain. ...