Tag Archives: ultrahot

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. An intervening galaxy bends and magnifies the light from the background quasar RX J1131, producing four distinct images (shown in pink). Tiny flickers in these images allowed astronomers, for the first time, to directly measure the size of the black hole’s superheated “corona,” …

Black holes may be invisible, but their surroundings aren’t — and for the first time, astronomers have directly measured a superheated “corona” encircling one of these cosmic giants. The supermassive black hole, RX J1131, sits about 6 billion light-years from Earth and spins at more than half the speed of light. While the monster itself remains hidden, it gorges on …