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Professional astronomers may not point their telescopes by hand anymore, but COVID-19 has still closed observatories and impeded research.
And why is the black hole at the center of our own galaxy so dim?
After a space telescope disintegrated, astrophysicists had little hope of understanding how supermassive black holes agitate giant galaxies. Then they invented a hack.
Tiny, dim “dwarf” galaxies have been found to hide gas-spewing black holes.
Astronomers couldn’t find enough satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. Now they have the opposite problem.
Quasars powered by supermassive black holes have been unexpectedly vanishing. Scientists have started to figure out why.
Hot spots have been discovered orbiting just outside the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center. Their motions have given us the closest look at that violent environment.
Computer simulations have become so accurate that cosmologists can now use them to study dark matter, supermassive black holes and other mysteries of the real evolving cosmos.
The astrophysicist Andrea Ghez spent two decades proving that a supermassive black hole anchors the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Her new plan? Test what happens when things get too close.