At the center of a galaxy called NGC 1068, a supermassive black hole hides within a thick doughnut-shaped cloud of dust and gas. When astronomers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to study this cloud in more detail, they made an unexpected discovery that could explain why supermassive black holes grew so rapidly in the...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded an additional $4M to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) to fund the design and development of the next generation Very Large Array (ngVLA). With this funding increment, NSF has created a cooperative support agreement for this new planned radio...
Swirling clouds, big colorful belts, giant storms — the beautiful and turbulent atmosphere of Jupiter has been showcased many times. But what is going on below the clouds? What is causing the many storms and eruptions that we see on the ‘surface’ of the planet? To see this, visible light is not enough. We need to study Jupiter using radio waves....
What happens inside a black hole stays inside a black hole, but what happens inside a black hole’s “sphere of influence” – the innermost region of a galaxy where a black hole’s gravity is the dominant force – is of intense interest to astronomers and can help determine the mass of a black hole as well as its impact on its galactic neighborhood....