Sentences with phrase «measuring black hole masses»

Such distances are key in pinning down the cosmological parameters that characterize our universe or in accurately measuring black hole masses.

Not exact matches

January 30, 2013 — Astronomers report the exciting discovery of a new way to measure the mass of supermassive black holes in galaxies.

Last year, x-ray astronomers also found hints of «intermediate» black holes with hundreds to thousands of times our sun's mass in other galaxies (ScienceNOW, 7 June 2001), but they hadn't measured the gravitational pulls of such holes — the best way to confirm their presence and gauge their masses.

A team of astronomers says it has found a new and remarkably simple way to measure the mass of a black hole: examine the shape of its home galaxy.

New observations reveal that the object weighs in at a whopping 6.6 billion suns, making it the most massive black hole for which a precise mass has ever been measured.

By analyzing this time difference and by measuring how fast the material is moving around the center of the galaxy, they were able to determine the mass of this central black hole.

NASA researchers say they successfully tested a new way to measure the mass of black holes.

To measure the mass and growth rate of these galaxies» active nuclei — the supermassive black holes at the galaxies» centers — the researchers used data from 12 different ground - based telescopes spread across the globe to complement the data from the Swift satellite.

Ranging from a hundred times to a few hundred thousand times the sun's mass, these intermediate - mass black holes are so hard to measure that even their existence is sometimes disputed.

While the intermediate - mass black hole that the team studied is not the first one measured, it is the first one so precisely measured, Mushotzky says, «establishing it as a compelling example of this class of black holes.»

With the help of lasers, he and colleagues detected the first complex molecules in interstellar space and first measured the mass of the black hole in the center of our galaxy.

Now observing the mass of a black hole (at least indirectly) is easy: you measure how fast things orbit around it, just the same as any other massive astronomical object.

But that debate can now be put to rest, says a research team that has measured an intermediate black hole's mass with unprecedented precision.

AO has measured the mass of the giant black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, imaged the four massive planets orbiting the star HR8799, discovered new supernovae in distant galaxies, and identified the specific stars that were their progenitors.

By measuring the orbiting star's rate of acceleration, astronomers can calculate the mass of the object pulling on it; when this mass is so large that nothing else can explain it, astronomers conclude it is a black hole.

In 2009, a team of astronomers used the Swift Spacecraft to measure the luminosity output of a distant Quasar, named S5 0014 +81, and measure the mass of the central black hole.

When Soria and his team of researchers measured P13's mass, they found that the black hole was actually on the smaller side, suggesting that black holes can consume more gas and produce more light than previously believed.