Animation: Black Hole Star Shredder
27.04.2021

What happens if a star gets too close to a black hole? The black hole can rip it apart -- but how? It's not the high gravitational attraction itself that's the problem -- it's the difference in gravitational pull across the star that creates the destruction.

Simulation: Two Black Holes Merge
14.04.2019

Sit back and watch two black holes merge. Inspired by the first direct detection of gravitational waves in 2015, this simulation video plays in slow motion but would take about one third of a second if run in real time.

First Horizon Scale Image of a Black Hole
11.04.2019

What does a black hole look like? To find out, radio telescopes from around the Earth coordinated observations of black holes with the largest known event horizons on the sky. Alone, black holes are just black, but these monster attractors are known to be surrounded by glowing gas.

M87s Central Black Hole in Polarized Light
31.03.2021

To play on Carl SaganБs famous words "If you wish to make black hole jets, you must first create magnetic fields." The featured image represents the detected intrinsic spin direction (polarization) of radio waves. The polarizationi is produced by the powerful magnetic field surrounding the supermassive black hole at the center of elliptical galaxy M87.

The Galaxy, the Jet and the Black Hole
27.04.2019

Bright elliptical galaxy Messier 87 (M87) is home to the supermassive black hole captured by planet Earth's Event Horizon Telescope in the first ever image of a black hole. Giant of the Virgo...

APOD: 2024 October 1 Б Porphyrion: The Longest Known Black Hole Jets
1.10.2024

How far can black hole jets extend? A new record was found just recently with the discovery of a 23-million light-year long jet pair from a black hole active billions of years ago. Dubbed...

The Galaxy, the Jet, and a Famous Black Hole
4.05.2023

Bright elliptical galaxy Messier 87 (M87) is home to the supermassive black hole captured in 2017 by planet Earth's Event Horizon Telescope in the first ever image of a black hole. Giant...

A Plurality of Singularities at the Galactic Center
12.05.2018

A recent informal poll found that astronomers don't yet have a good collective noun for a group of black holes, but they need one. The red circles in this Chandra Observatory X-ray image identify a group of a dozen black holes that are members of binary star systems.

Spin up of a Supermassive Black Hole
12.03.2013

How fast can a black hole spin? If any object made of regular matter spins too fast -- it breaks apart. But a black hole might not be able to break apart -- and its maximum spin rate is really unknown.

Heavy Black Hole Jets in 4U1630 47
20.11.2013

What are black hole jets made of? Many black holes in stellar systems are surely surrounded by disks of gas and plasma gravitationally pulled from a close binary star companion. Some of this material...