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The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration has conducted test observations with the highest resolution ever obtained from the surface of the Earth. This feat was achieved by detecting light from distant galaxies at a frequency of around 345 GHz, equivalent to a wavelength of 0.87 mm. The Collaboration estimates that, in the future, they will be able to make black hole images 50% more detailed than before. This improvement will sharpen images of supermassive black holes, and allow astronomers to image more black holes than ever before.

An international team of astronomers, including scientists at the U.S. National Science Foundation National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO) have discovered a powerful, rotating, magnetic wind that they believe is helping a galaxy’s central supermassive black hole to grow.

At the 244th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), researchers unveiled groundbreaking findings from a pioneering high-angular resolution program that sheds new light on the process of planet formation in circumstellar disks around young stars in binary systems.

FUor stars flare suddenly, erupting in brightness, before dimming again many years later. It is now understood that this brightening is due to the stars taking in energy from their surroundings via gravitational accretion, the main force that shapes stars and planets. However, how and why this happens remained a mystery—until now, thanks to astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).