XMM-Newton spots a black hole throwing a tantrum

Black holes are like temperamental toddlers. They spill food all the time, but ESA's XMM-Newton has caught a black hole in the act of "flipping over the table" during an otherwise civilized meal.

Blackhole with warped accretion disc discovered

An international team of astrophysicists from South Africa, the UK, France and the US have found large variations in the brightness of light seen from around one of the closest black holes in our Galaxy, 9,600 light-years ...

Strange gamma-ray heartbeat puzzles scientists

Scientists have detected a mysterious gamma-ray heartbeat coming from a cosmic gas cloud. The inconspicuous cloud in the constellation Aquila is beating with the rhythm of a neighboring precessing black hole, indicating a ...

Astronomers propose a new method for detecting black holes

A stellar mass black hole is a compact object with a mass greater than three solar masses. It is so dense and has such a powerful force of attraction that not even light can escape from it. They cannot be observed directly, ...

Novel tools to analyse radiation near black holes

With the current state of scientific knowledge and equipment, understanding astrophysical black holes invariably requires detailed studies of the observable elements surrounding them. The STRONGGRAVITY project has developed ...

Dazzling spiral with an active heart

ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) has captured a magnificent face-on view of the barred spiral galaxy Messier 77. The image does justice to the galaxy's beauty, showcasing its glittering arms criss-crossed with dust lanes—but ...

Mind the gap—Rapid Burster behaviour explained

Scientists observing a curious neutron star in a binary system known as the 'Rapid Burster' may have solved a forty-year-old mystery surrounding its puzzling X-ray bursts. They discovered that its magnetic field creates a ...

page 1 from 2