The American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle is in full swing, so the astronomy news is going to be flying this week! One of the first press releases is one I’ve been looking forward to for weeks. Several UVa and NRAO astronomers discovered a supermassive black hole in a dwarf galaxy! I actually heard aboutContinue reading “Fluffy Galaxy with Surprise Center”
Tag Archives: black holes
AstroJargon of the Week: Blazar
This week’s… last week’s… aw, did I miss a week? Anyway, THIS week’s “astrojargon” has a super-fun name, and it’s a pretty fun object as well. I’m talking about blazars. This is a subclass of AGN, the jargon with which I started my series. A blazar is highly variable, very luminous, and quite polarized. (PolarizationContinue reading “AstroJargon of the Week: Blazar”
AstroJargon of the Week – AGN
Jeffrey Bennett, astronomer and author, once told us that a typical astronomy textbook has about as many vocabulary words as a typical foreign language textbook. So, in addition to teaching physical and astronomical concepts, we’re teaching a whole new language! Jargon is incredibly useful for making detailed communication within a specific field efficient and convenient,Continue reading “AstroJargon of the Week – AGN”
Seeing Black Holes
This press release came out yesterday that was SO EXCITING to me that I was bouncing up and down. In today’s Nature, astronomers write about the successful attempt to resolve the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy using 1.3 mm VLBI. And now you are going, “huh? jargon say what?” As mostContinue reading “Seeing Black Holes”