Astronomers developed a new theory for the formation of supermassive black holes. Data from NASA’s Great Observatories support their theoretical framework.

Astronomers used the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii to detect the faintest galaxy of the early universe. The detection was made possible through a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing.

Last June astronomers detected the brightest supernova that has ever been observed, known as ASASSN-15lh. The object had been classified as hydrogen-poor superluminous supernova fuelled by a magnetar, altough it is hotter and more luminous than any other hydrogen–poor supernova thus making the classification uncertain. Now scientists try to uncover the nature of this mysterious source using new observational data.

Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULX) are extragalactic sources with luminosities that exceed any known stellar process. Their origin, though, remains unclear. In an attempt to identify the nature of two ULXs, astrophysicists analyzed their X-ray spectra taken with the XMM-Newton and Chandra space telescopes.

Astronomers studied 320 galaxy clusters, the largest structures in the universe held together by gravity, to find information about the nature of dark energy.

A giant star with radius 200 times larger than our sun, exploded into a supernova, 30 million years ago. Although it was one of the closest to Earth explosions in recent years, its distance was large enough that the light from the explosion took 30 million years to arrive to us. The massive explosion was visible from the Earth as a point like in the night sky, starting July 24th, 2013.

Hitomi, the most sensitive X-ray satellite, lost communication with Earth on 26th of March, only about a month after its launch. Now scientists believe that a basic engineering error might be the cause of the failure

NASA’s Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft detected a by-product of supernova explosions in Earth bound cosmic rays. This indicates that nearby supernovae have blasted Earth with radioactive material and therefore may have affected the course of our evolution.

Astronomers detected a group of supermassive black holes that are aligned, i.e. their axe of rotation points in the same direction. Since huge distances separate the aligned black holes, there is no way of exchanging information or influencing each other directly.

There are galaxies that contain not only one, but two supermassive black holes! The two black holes are usually 3,000 light years apart from each other, a distance that roughly corresponds to the 1/8 of distance from our solar system to the center of our galaxy.