Supermassive black hole

Artist's impression of the Green Bank Telescope collecting data on the center of the Milky Way. The circled image shows the black hole at the center of our galaxy, and a potential pulsar (unverified) nearby. Credit: Danielle Futselaar / Breakthrough Listen

Something is ticking near the Milky Way's supermassive black hole

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A sensitive radio survey by Breakthrough Listen has identified a candidate millisecond pulsar near Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. If confirmed, the finding could enable unprecedented tests of general relativity.
An artist's impression of a supermassive black hole tearing apart a giant star, at least 30 times the mass of the Sun. This is how scientists explain what happened around the distant black hole J2245+3743, which in 2018 caused the brightest flare ever measured from a black hole – with a luminous intensity of about 10 trillion suns – detected by the ZTF and Catalina sky surveys.

Webb's first depth field and the brightest flare from a supermassive black hole

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James Webb Space Telescope reveals stunning deep-sky image of thousands of distant galaxies, while Caltech's ZTF sky survey reveals record flare from supermassive black hole that devoured a giant star 10 billion light-years away
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