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  1. NASA's Hubble, Chandra Spot Rare Type of Black Hole Eating a Star

    July 24, 2025Release ID: 2025-016 Missions: Hubble

    Hubble Looks at an Intermediate Black Hole Roaming Inside a Galaxy

    Two elliptical galaxies at upper right and lower left appear as fuzzy white ovals. At bottom center is a fuzzy purple blob outlined by a white box. White lines angle outward from the corners of the box to a blow-up of the purple blob. At the center is a white dot labeled HLX-1. The main image also has two bright stars with prominent diffraction spikes. The background of space is black, and is speckled with tiny white dots.

  2. NASA's Hubble Pinpoints Roaming Massive Black Hole

    May 08, 2025Release ID: 2025-015 Missions: Hubble

    Wandering black hole ate a star that got in its way.

    Six-panel illustration marked "Artist's Concept." The upper left panel shows the silhouette of supermassive black that is adrift inside a galaxy. The middle upper panel shows a yellow star drifting near the black hole. The three following panels show the star being shredded in bright white concentric streamers followed by a white explosion. the bottom right panel is an external view of the galaxy showing a bright white star-like object that is the site if the explosion as viewed in X-rays and visible light.

  3. Webb Reveals Rapid-Fire Light Show From Milky Way's Central Black Hole

    February 18, 2025Release ID: 2025-110 Missions: Webb

    Observations revealed ongoing fireworks featuring short bursts and longer flares.

    A large, black circle representing a black hole occupies the right third of the frame in this illustration. Thick, clumpy orange streaks arc above and below it, essentially surrounding it. The top arc extends down to the lower left and then curves around in front of the black hole to form a disk that is tilted toward the viewer. Near the inner edge of the disk, several bright, whiter spots have blue filaments looping above them, representing flares. The words “Artist’s Concept” appear below the illustration.

  4. Webb Maps Full Picture of How Phoenix Galaxy Cluster Forms Stars

    February 13, 2025Release ID: 2025-107 Missions: Webb

    Discovery proves decades-old theory of galaxy feeding cycle.

    A galaxy cluster. The center of the cluster is bright white with short red jets that point toward the top right and bottom left, and several blue filaments that spread throughout the center. Outside the bright center is purple gas that is bright toward the center of the image and dimmer further from the center. There are contour lines overlayed in different colors. A key on the bottom indicates what each outline is representing. On the left side of the key, green irregular concentric lines shaped like a mountain on a topographic map are shown with the text cooling gas. Those same contours are placed overtop the center of the galaxy cluster. At the right side of the key, purple dashed lines are shaped in two ovals with the text jet-inflated bubbles. These oval outlines are place above and below the green contours at the center of the image.

  5. NASA's Hubble Takes the Closest-Ever Look at a Quasar

    December 05, 2024Release ID: 2024-024 Missions: Hubble, STScI

    Legendary Active Galaxy Contains a Monster Black Hole

    A two-panel annotated image of quasar 3C 273, taken by different Hubble science instruments. The top panel is a Hubble Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) image of quasar 3C 273. It looks like a bright white car headlight. There is a linear orange-white smoke-like feature stretching to the 4 o’clock position, an extragalactic jet launched from the quasar in the center of the black hole of an unseen galaxy. The bottom panel is a Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) coronagraph image of quasar 3C 273. It looks roughly the same as the WFPC2 image, but in blue shades. A black circle (labeled "core light blocked") blocks the glare of the quasar. Blue-colored filamentary material can be seen near the black hole. The extragalactic jet is still visible.

  6. NASA's Hubble Finds that a Black Hole Beam Promotes Stellar Eruptions

    September 26, 2024Release ID: 2024-008 Missions: Hubble

    Nova Explosions in Double Star Systems Doubled Near Black Hole Jet

    An artist's concept looks down into the core of the galaxy M87, which is just left of center and appears as a large blue dot. A bright blue-white, narrow and linear jet of plasma transects the illustration from center left to upper right. It begins at the source of the jet, the galaxy's black hole, which is surrounded by a blue spiral of material. At lower right is a red giant star that is far from the black hole and close to the viewer. A bridge of glowing gas links the star to a smaller white dwarf star companion immediately to its left. Engorged with infalling hydrogen from the red giant star, the smaller star exploded in a blue-white flash, which looks like numerous diffraction spikes emitted in all directions. Thousands of stars are in the background.

  7. NASA's Hubble Finds More Black Holes than Expected in the Early Universe

    September 17, 2024Release ID: 2024-032 Missions: Hubble

    A Survey of Hubble’s Deepest Look Back into Time Uncovers New Clues

    A black background of space, sprinkled with thousands of galaxies of all shapes and sizes. In the middle of the picture is an inset box showing a closeup of a pair of galaxies from the background. The larger galaxy is spiral-shaped. The other is spindle-shaped because the galaxy is seen edge-on. The smaller galaxy has a line that points to the words "supermassive black hole" connects to a bright white spot in the middle of it.

  8. NASA's Hubble, Chandra Find Supermassive Black Hole Duo

    September 09, 2024Release ID: 2024-022 Missions: Hubble

    Cores of Two Galaxies Are on a Collision Course

    Artist's depiction of a pair of active black holes at the heart of two merging galaxies. One distant black hole is at upper left, and a foreground black hole is at lower right. The black holes are both surrounded by a yellow-orange accretion disk of hot gas. Some of the material is ejected along the spin axis of each black hole and resembles two pencil-thin blue jets, like a spindle through a record. The disk at lower right fills the corner of the image and is tilted to the left, with the jet pointing in the 11 o'clock direction. The disk at upper left is much smaller and tilted to the right, with the jet aimed at the 1 o'clock position. The background is filled with thousands of white stars and red clouds of gas and dust.

  9. NASA's Hubble Finds Strong Evidence for Intermediate-Mass Black Hole in Omega Centauri

    July 10, 2024Release ID: 2024-015 Missions: Hubble

    Elusive Black Hole Tucked Away in Heart of Star Cluster

    An image of the globular cluster Omega Centauri, a collection of myriad stars colored red, white, and blue on the black background of space.

  10. NASA's Roman Space Telescope Could Help Researchers Detect the Universe’s First Stars

    May 09, 2024Release ID: 2024-204 Missions: STScI, Roman

    Tidal disruption events offer an opportunity to locate the elusive stars.

    An illustration of a star being torn apart by a black hole.

  11. Webb Detects Most Distant Active Supermassive Black Hole to Date

    July 06, 2023Release ID: 2023-114 Missions: Webb

    With Webb, a slew of other distant black holes and early galaxies also popped into view for the first time.

    Thousands of galaxies appear in this view, which is set against the black background of space. There are many overlapping objects at various distances. They include large, blue foreground stars, some with all eight diffraction spikes, and white and pink spiral and elliptical galaxies. Numerous tiny red dots appear throughout the scene. This is a portion of a vast survey known shorthand as CEERS.

  12. NASA's Webb Identifies the Earliest Strands of the Cosmic Web

    June 29, 2023Release ID: 2023-124 Missions: Webb

    A filament of 10 galaxies seen just 830 million years after the birth of the universe

    Image shows a black field speckled with a variety of galaxies of numerous shapes and sizes. The galaxies are white, yellow, blue and red. Red is the predominant galaxy color in the field, indicating very distant galaxies. Eight white circles mark the position of 10 galaxies (two circles contain more than one galaxy). The 10 galaxies are arranged in a diagonal, thread-like line from the bottom left to the top right. This 3-million-light-year-long filament is anchored by a very distant and luminous quasar – a galaxy with an active, supermassive black hole at its core. The quasar, called J0305-3150, appears in the middle of the cluster of three circles on the right side of the image. Its brightness outshines its host galaxy.

  13. NASA's Hubble Hunts for Intermediate-Sized Black Hole Close to Home

    May 23, 2023Release ID: 2023-016 Missions: Hubble

    A Dark Central Mass is Lurking at the Hub of a Glittering Stellar Island

    Thousands of bright points of light on a black background fill the field of view. They appear somewhat more concentrated near the center of the image. They have a variety of colors, with the most prominent stars appearing blue or yellow-orange. The brighter stars also display four diffraction spikes.

  14. Hubble Sees Possible Runaway Black Hole Creating a Trail of Stars

    April 06, 2023Release ID: 2023-010 Missions: Hubble

    A Bizarre 200,000-Light-Year-Long Bridge Links a Galaxy to Its Escaping Black Hole

    This illustration shows a black field speckled with white, yellow and red galaxies. A black hole, near the left, bottom corner of the image, plows through space, leaving a diagonal trail of newborn stars stretching back to the black hole's parent galaxy.

  15. Hubble Unexpectedly Finds Double Quasar in Distant Universe

    April 05, 2023Release ID: 2023-002 Missions: Hubble

    A Pair of Merging Galaxies Ignite Black Holes on a Collision Course

    Artist's concept showing a chaotic, nebulous, tangled blur of blue, brown, red, white and gold against a black, deep-space field peppered with stars and galaxies.

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