Nobel-Prize laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, for whom NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory was named, described black holes as “the most perfect macroscopic objects there are in the universe: the only elements in their construction are our concepts of space and time.”
In 2019 astronomers lifted the veil on the monster black hole called Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) at the heart of our Milky Way Galaxy. Using computer modelling, the scientists simulated the material inside the thick cloud of plasma, dust and gas surrounding Sgr A*. The results pointed to the possibility of a relativistic jet coming from the supermassive black hole with an inclination that is aligned with Earth’s viewing point.
Editor, Jackie Faherty, astrophysicist, Senior Scientist with AMNH. Jackie was formerly a NASA Hubble Fellow at the Carnegie Institution for Science. Aside from a love of scientific research, she is a passionate educator and can often be found giving public lectures in the Hayden Planetarium. Her research team has won multiple grants from NASA, NSF, and the Heising Simons foundation to support projects focused on characterising planet-like objects. She has also co-founded the popular citizen science project entitled Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 which invites the general public to help scan the solar neighbourhood for previously missed cold worlds. A Google Scholar, Faherty has over 100 peer reviewed articles in astrophysical journals and has been an invited speaker at universities and conferences across the globe. Jackie received the 2020 Vera Rubin Early Career Prize from the American Astronomical Society, an award that recognises scientists who have made an impact in the field of dynamical astronomy and the 2021 Robert H Goddard Award for science accomplishments.
“Researchers argue that it’s of utmost importance to unravel the nature of black holes, lest we someday begin to worship them,” said Harvard astrophysicist, Eric Chaisson. In April 2019 an event took place that was as epic as the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon, and may make Chaisson’s warning seem prescient.
Editor, Jackie Faherty, astrophysicist, Senior Scientist with AMNH. Jackie was formerly a NASA Hubble Fellow at the Carnegie Institution for Science. Aside from a love of scientific research, she is a passionate educator and can often be found giving public lectures in the Hayden Planetarium. Her research team has won multiple grants from NASA, NSF, and the Heising Simons foundation to support projects focused on characterising planet-like objects. She has also co-founded the popular citizen science project entitled Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 which invites the general public to help scan the solar neighbourhood for previously missed cold worlds. A Google Scholar, Faherty has over 100 peer reviewed articles in astrophysical journals and has been an invited speaker at universities and conferences across the globe. Jackie received the 2020 Vera Rubin Early Career Prize from the American Astronomical Society, an award that recognises scientists who have made an impact in the field of dynamical astronomy and the 2021 Robert H Goddard Award for science accomplishments.
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