Sunday, December 18, 2011

Astronomers Find the Most Supermassive Black Holes Yet

Astronomers Find the Most Supermassive Black Holes Yet:



An artist's impression of a supermassive black hole. Image credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA artwork by Lynette Cook



For years, astronomer Karl Gebhardt and graduate student Jeremy Murphy at The University of Texas at Austin have been hunting for black holes — the dense concentration of matter at the centre of galaxies. Earlier this year, they made a record-breaking discovery. They found a black hole weighing 6.7 billion times the mass of our Sun in the centre of the galaxy M87.


But now they shattered their own record. Combining new data from multiple observations, they’ve found not one but two supermassive black holes that each weigh as much as 10 billion Suns.(...)
Read the rest of Astronomers Find the Most Supermassive Black Holes Yet (669 words)




© Amy Shira Teitel for Universe Today, 2011. |
Permalink |
20 comments |
Add to
del.icio.us


Post tags: , ,


Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh



No comments:

Post a Comment