News Release

Clumpy Doughnuts around Supermassive Black Holes

March 21st, 2024

Studying how accreting supermassive black holes vary in brightness over time, NuSTAR finds evidence they are embedded in a clumpy, doughnut-shaped structure.

News Release

An X-ray Look at the Heart of Powerful Quasars

May 25th, 2023

Researchers have observed the X-ray emission of the most luminous quasar seen in the last 9 billion years of cosmic history. The new perspective sheds light on the inner workings of quasars and how they interact with their environment.

News Release

NASA Gets Unusually Close Glimpse of Black Hole Snacking on Star

December 20th, 2022

Recent observations of a black hole devouring a wandering star may help scientists understand more complex black hole feeding behaviors.

News Release

NuSTAR is Working with IXPE to Reveal the Shape, Orientation of Hot Matter Around Black Hole

November 7th, 2022

Working together with NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), NuSTAR is helping to reveal the structure of the corona around black holes.

News Release

A Decade of NuSTAR: What Its X-Ray Vision Has Taught Us

August 3rd, 2022

NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), led by Caltech and managed by JPL, turned 10 years old in June. This space telescope detects high-energy X-ray light and studies some of the most energetic objects and processes in the universe.

News Release

Black holes can tell us the expansion rate of the Universe

November 10th, 2021

Astronomers have discovered a new way to determine the current expansion rate of the Universe, known as the Hubble constant, using X-ray observations of supermassive black holes at the centre of distant galaxies that are gobbling up huge amounts of gas, known as active galactic nuclei. This could settle an on-going dispute between the two existing methods, which disagree on the age of the Universe by more than a billion years.

News Release

NuSTAR and XMM-Newton See Light Echo from Behind a Black Hole

August 4th, 2021

For the first time, astronomers have singled out light coming from behind a black hole, enabling them to study the processes on its far side.

News Release

Uncovering the Hidden Black Holes

June 25th, 2021

From a carefully selected sample of nearby galaxies hosting actively accreting supermassive black holes, astronomers use NuSTAR to find that a third of the black holes are hidden behind thick columns of gas and dust.

News Release

Telescopes Unite in Unprecedented Observations of Famous Black Hole

April 14th, 2021

Some of the world’s most powerful telescopes simultaneously observed the supermassive black hole in galaxy M87, the first black hole to be directly imaged.

News Release

A Tale of Two Coronae: Solving the Mystery of the “Soft Excess”

March 26th, 2021

Astronomers are investigating the mystery of the “soft excess” of low-energy X-ray emission often seen from accreting supermassive black holes. This enigmatic component can carry a large fraction of the X-ray flux, but is poorly understood. Multiple theories have been suggested. Simultaneous observations with NuSTAR (at high energy X-rays) and XMM-Newton (at low-energy X-rays) provide a powerful combination to investigate its origin.

News Release

Shredded star may have caused luminous X-ray transient in a galaxy far, far away

March 12th, 2021

A serendipitous X-ray flare detected by NASA’s Swift observatory is likely associated with a supermassive black hole at the core of a distant galaxy shredding a star that wandered too close.

News Release

After-Flare Detected from Black Hole Dance

October 13th, 2020

NuSTAR detects after-flare caused by black hole crashing through the accretion disk of a more massive black hole.

News Release

Hidden in Plain Sight: Monster Black Holes Found in Nearby Galaxies

July 29th, 2020

NASA’s NuSTAR satellite has observed the faintest growing supermassive black holes in our cosmic backyard, and found that some of them are actually luminous “monsters” hiding behind thick clouds of dust and gas.

News Release

Runaway Star Might Explain Black Hole's Disappearing Act

July 16th, 2020

The telltale sign that the black hole was feeding vanished, perhaps when a star interrupted the feast. The event could lend new insight into these mysterious objects.

News Release

Found: Three Black Holes on Collision Course

September 26th, 2019

Astronomers have spotted three giant black holes within a titanic collision of three galaxies. The unusual system was captured by several observatories, including three NASA space telescopes.

News Release

NASA Satellite Spots a Mystery That's Gone in a Flash

September 4th, 2019

NASA's NuSTAR X-ray observatory saw a flash of light that could be produced only by an extremely energetic event. Scientists are investigating what could have caused the flare.

News Release

Black Hole Image Makes History

April 10th, 2019

A black hole and its shadow have been captured in an image for the first time, a historic feat by an international network of radio telescopes called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). EHT is an international collaboration whose support in the U.S. includes the National Science Foundation.

News Release

In Colliding Galaxies, a Pipsqueak Shines Bright

February 20th, 2019

In the nearby Whirlpool galaxy and its companion galaxy, M51b, two supermassive black holes heat up and devour surrounding material. These two monsters should be the most luminous X-ray sources in sight, but a new study using observations from NASA's NuSTAR mission shows that a much smaller object is competing with the two behemoths.

News Release

Holy Cow! Mysterious Blast Studied with NASA Telescopes

January 10th, 2019

A brief and unusual flash spotted in the night sky on June 16, 2018, puzzled astronomers and astrophysicists across the globe. The event - called AT2018cow and nicknamed "the Cow" after the coincidental final letters in its official name - is unlike any celestial outburst ever seen before, prompting multiple theories about its source.

News Release

How Strong are Black Holes Really?

December 7th, 2017

Black holes are famous for their muscle: an intense gravitational pull known to gobble up entire stars and launch streams of matter into space at almost the speed of light. It turns out the reality may not live up to the hype. University of Florida scientists have discovered these tears in the fabric of the universe have significantly weaker magnetic fields than previously thought.

News Release

NuSTAR Probes Black Hole Jet Mystery

October 30th, 2017

Black holes are famous for being ravenous eaters, but they do not eat everything that falls toward them. A small portion of material gets shot back out in powerful jets of hot gas, called plasma, that can wreak havoc on their surroundings. Along the way, this plasma somehow gets energized enough to strongly radiate light, forming two bright columns along the black hole's axis of rotation. Scientists have long debated where and how this happens in the jet.

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