Twos and threes. Dual AGN are rare, and triple systems are rarer. This leads astronomers to ask why that might be. Maybe they’re just hard to spot, or maybe they don’t last very long.

A rotating donut. Astronomers use the “unified model” of AGN to describe the structure around a feeding black hole. It’s believed this structure and its orientation affect what we see, which ...

As matter falls into these black holes, enormous amounts of energy are released, making active galactic nuclei, or AGN, one of the most energetic phenomena that can be observed in space. Phys.org ...

Known as 1ES 1927+654, this supermassive black hole has exhibited unique and puzzling behavior, leading scientists to new insights about active galactic nuclei (AGN). The journey began in 2018 ...

This collection and the corresponding Nature Astronomy focus issue on AGN outflows and feedback bring together newly commissioned content and original scientific research that try to elucidate ...

A 3D animated diagram of the marvellous eclipsing absorber, composed of multi-phase and clumpy clouds. The large black spheres represent the clumpy Compton-thick clouds in the dense core of the ...

Over the past four years, astronomers have been able to watch the supermassive black hole in SDSS1335+0728’s center go from dim and quiet to bright and active, the first time such a transition ...

Called BADASS, which stands for Bayesian AGN Decomposition Analysis for SDSS Spectra, the code in its current form fits astronomical spectra of active galactic nuclei, or AGNs, from the Sloan ...

The AGN phase is thought to be an important step for gathering so much mass. “Maybe all galaxies don’t go through this active phase, [and] their black holes grow pretty slowly,” Kirkpatrick ...

Supermassive black holes (SMBH) occupy the center of galaxies, with masses ranging from one million to 10 billion solar masses. Some SMBHs are in a bright phase called active galactic nuclei (AGN).

Astronomers have now produced the highest resolution direct images ever taken of a supermassive black hole in the infrared, using the Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer.