Articles by Shreejaya Karantha
Phys.org / Dormant black hole revives in under three years, brightening 10-fold in nearby galaxy
Astronomers monitoring a nearby active galaxy for six years have watched its supermassive black hole dramatically wake up, brightening by a factor of 10 across ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths. The paper outlining the study ...
Phys.org / A giant star may have destroyed itself in one of the universe's rarest explosions
Astronomers may have discovered one of the clearest examples yet of a rare "pair-instability" supernova. It is a catastrophic explosion thought to completely destroy some of the most massive stars in the universe, leaving ...
Phys.org / JWST finds a stellar bar in the early universe that breaks all rules
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have discovered a stellar bar in GN20, a massive galaxy seen just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang. The new paper was submitted to the preprint server arXiv on May ...
Phys.org / A hidden supermassive black hole may be lurking inside the Antennae galaxies
Astronomers may have uncovered a hidden supermassive black hole inside the famous Antennae galaxies NGC 4038/4039, a pair of colliding galaxies best known for their spectacular bursts of star formation. The paper outlining ...
Phys.org / Universe's most distant 'Hot DOG' yet may owe extreme infrared glow to polar dust, Webb reveals
New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed fresh details about one of the most luminous known objects in the universe: the dust-shrouded quasar W2246−0526, seen just 1.2 billion years after the Big ...
Phys.org / Heavily reddened quasars caught going through a 'blow-out' phase
At the center of most large galaxies sits a supermassive black hole (SMBH). When these black holes are actively consuming material, they become incredibly luminous quasars. But some quasars appear wrapped in thick clouds ...
Phys.org / Astronomers may have discovered the tiniest odd radio circle
Astronomers have identified a possible new member of one of astronomy's strangest classes of objects: Odd radio circles (ORCs), enormous ring-like structures visible only at radio wavelengths. The newly discovered source, ...
Phys.org / Supernova dust may be behind one of JWST's biggest puzzles
Astronomers may have found an explanation for one of the biggest mysteries revealed by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): why so many galaxies in the early universe appear unexpectedly bright in ultraviolet light. The ...
Phys.org / eROSITA discovers a 'changing-look' Seyfert galaxy
Astronomers have tracked a dramatic "changing-look" active galactic nucleus (AGN) whose central supermassive black hole appeared to switch off and then rapidly reignite. The galaxy, HE 1237−2252, dimmed in X-rays by a factor ...
Phys.org / JWST spots two early black holes growing far faster than their galaxies
Astronomers have discovered two early-universe galaxies where the central black holes appear to have grown far faster than their host galaxies. Observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reveal that the black ...
Phys.org / Astronomers uncover over 1,000 radio galaxies with 'wings,' expanding a rare cosmic class
Astronomers recently carried out a comprehensive search for strange "winged" radio galaxies using data from the LOFAR Two-meter Sky Survey Data Release 2 (LoTSS DR2) and discovered over 1,000 new systems. The paper outlining ...
Science X / What are dark galaxies? Astronomers expose 70 hidden candidates with no visible stars
Galaxies are not always teeming with vibrant, hot young stars. Sometimes, they are rich in gas and dark matter but have very few or no stars, making them extremely difficult to detect. They are called "dark galaxies" and ...
Phys.org / Two blazing quasars caught waltzing into a merger
Astronomers, using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), have confirmed the existence of a close quasar pair housed in a pair of merging galaxies seen when the universe was less than a billion years old, ...
Phys.org / These blazing blue explosions may be born when a compact dead star slams into a Wolf-Rayet star
Luminous fast blue optical transients (LFBOTs) are among the universe's brightest and fastest explosions but their origin is not completely understood. A new study takes a closer look at the galaxies they occur in, offering ...
Phys.org / Astronomers find evidence for three subpopulations of merging black holes
Astronomers analyzing gravitational-wave data from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration have reported that merging binary black holes fall into three distinct categories. The study shows that the three subpopulations have their ...
