Quasars

Fastest and most furious ultraviolet wind near a black hole found by York University researchers

A team led by York University researchers has discovered the fastest wind near a supermassive black hole ever found at ultraviolet wavelengths, driven by the disc of matter, or quasar, surrounding the black hole.  “This quasar has a black hole of 1.7 billion times the mass of the Sun. That’s typical. What’s not typical is that it has gas moving towards us at 30 per cent of the speed of light,” says York Professor Patrick Hall of the Faculty of Science.

Black hole wind is speeding up, new study finds

Clouds of gas in a distant galaxy are being pushed faster and faster out among neighbouring stars by blasts of radiation from the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s centre, a discovery that helps illuminate the way active black holes can continuously shape their galaxies by spurring on or snuffing out the development of new stars.

Next-gen astronomical survey makes its first observations toward understanding the cosmos

TORONTO, Nov. 2, 2020 — The Sloan Digital Sky Survey’s (SDSS) fifth generation collected its very first observations of the cosmos at 1:47 a.m. on Oct. 24. As the world's first all-sky time-domain spectroscopic survey, SDSS-V will provide groundbreaking insight into the formation and evolution of galaxies – like our own Milky Way – and the supermassive black holes that lurk at their centers.