Research

In visible light, it looks like a normal galaxy. In infrared, it reveals a monster. Meet Virgil, the galaxy that is rewriting black hole history. Before JWST, astronomers believed galaxies grew first, nurturing small black holes that grew slowly over time. Virgil breaks this rule. Its black hole is "Overmassive"—far larger than its host galaxy should be able to support. It's like finding a skyscraper engine inside a compact car.

JWST has found evidence of a thick atmosphere on the ultra-hot Super-Earth TOI-561 b, challenging the idea that such close-in worlds are barren rocks. TOI-561 b is an "Ultra-Short Period" planet, orbiting its star in less than 11 hours. It is tidally locked, meaning one side faces the star forever.

Westerlund 1 is the biggest star cluster in our galaxy. New data reveals it acts as a colossal particle accelerator, blasting a hole through the Milky Way's disk.

A rare, magnified supernova from 10 billion years ago might finally solve the mystery of the universe's expansion rate. We know the universe is expanding, but we don't agree on how fast. This disagreement is called the Hubble Tension. Early Universe (CMB): Says ~67 km/s/Mpc. Late Universe (Supernovae): Says ~73 km/s/Mpc. SN 2025wny is a "Goldilocks" object. It's an independent test. By measuring the time delay between its lensed images, we can calculate the expansion rate d

Galaxies aren't always flat disks. Many are warped, bent by invisible forces. New research links these shapes to the satellite galaxies that surround them. Using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, researchers led by Prof. Woong-bae Zee examined hundreds of warped galaxies. They compared them to a "control group" of flat galaxies. The goal: To see if the neighbors (satellite galaxies) had anything to do with the warping.

For the first time, scientists have watched a black hole drag the very fabric of spacetime around with it, creating a "wobbling" vortex visible from Earth. The event AT2020afhd was a Tidal Disruption Event (TDE)—a star ripped apart by a black hole. But unlike normal TDEs, the X-ray and radio signals weren't steady. They rhythmically brightened and dimmed every 20 days.

Astronomers have detected the longest-lasting gamma-ray burst in history. It defies standard models and hides within a dusty, massive galaxy. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) usually last just a few seconds (Short GRBs) or a few minutes (Long GRBs). They are blink-and-you-miss-it cataclysms. GRB 250702B lasted nearly seven hours.

Astronomers have witnessed a supermassive black hole hurling matter at 20% the speed of light—driven not by heat, but by snapping magnetic fields. We usually think of black holes ejecting matter via radiation pressure (heat). But SRON researchers found something different: the outburst was driven by Magnetic Reconnection. This is the same mechanism that causes solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) on our Sun. Magnetic field lines twist, snap, and reconnect, releasi

An unusually bright flare in a distant galaxy wasn't a supernova. It was a star being ripped apart by a hidden black hole. The flare AT2022zod lasted just over a month. It was detected in an elliptical galaxy about 10,000 light-years from the center. Astronomers had to rule out the usual suspects. It was too bright and fast for a standard supernova. It wasn't the galaxy's central supermassive black hole (too far away).

Astronomers have found the chemical fingerprints of the first "Monster Stars"—titans 10,000 times the mass of the Sun—solving the mystery of supermassive black holes. How do you get so much nitrogen? The answer lies inside stars weighing 10,000 times the mass of the Sun. In these titans, the core is so hot that the CNO Cycle (Carbon-Nitrogen-Oxygen) goes into overdrive.