Tag: Central

Brightest Galaxy in the Universe Discovered

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Of the approximately 100 Million galaxies in the visible universe, we see incredible variation.  We always try to classify them based on their shape, size, and peak radiation, but even then we still find others that stray from the usual patterns.  In recent years, a new class of galaxies named Extremely Luminous Infrared Galaxies (ELIRGs) has been found with data from the Wide Field Infrared Survey (WISE).  Now the king of the ELIRGs has been found, the most luminous galaxy in the universe. The galaxy, designated WISE J224607.57-052635.0, has a luminosity equal to 300 Trillion suns, and may owe its brightness...

Best View Yet of Gas Cloud Passing Milky Way Black Hole

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A few months ago I talked about Astronomers seeing the gas cloud known as G2 passing the central black hole of the Milky Way, called Sagittarius A*, and how we had hoped to watch the black hole destroy it in order to learn about the behaviour of supermassive black holes.  As we all sat and watched the passage of the cloud over the course of a few months, we were surprised to find that the cloud remained intact and passed straight by Sag A*.  When we last checked in, the leading theory was that the ‘cloud’ actually was a dense...