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A Dust-bound Supermassive Black Hole  This artist's impression shows the dust torus around a super-massive black hole. Black holes lurk at the centers of active galaxies in environments not unlike those found in violent tornadoes on Earth. Just as in a tornado, where debris is often found spinning about the vortex, so in a black hole, a dust torus surrounds its waist. In some cases astronomers can look along the axis of the dust torus from above or from below and have a clear view of the black hole. Technically these objects are then called "type 1 sources." Dissecting a Dusty Black Hole  This illustration allows a peek into the inner workings of a dusty supermassive black hole. In the center the black hole is seen surrounded by an accretion disk (yellow). Further out the dust torus is shown in blue. Two jets are emanating from the inner regions. The James Webb Space Telescope  An artists painting of the proposed James Webb Space Telescope.
The James Webb Space Telescope  An artists impression of the proposed James Webb Space Telescope First Direct Measurements of Atmosphere on World Around Another Star  Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have made the first direct detection of the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a star outside our solar system. Their unique observations demonstrate that it is possible with Hubble and other telescopes to measure the chemical makeup of alien planet atmospheres and to potentially search for the chemical markers of life beyond Earth. The planet orbits a yellow, Sun-like star called HD 209458, located 150 light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. Bloated Stars Swallow Giant Planets  The phrase "big fish eat little fish" may hold true when it comes to planets and stars. Perhaps as many as 100 million of the Sun-like stars in our galaxy harbor close-orbiting gas giant planets like Jupiter, or stillborn stars known as brown dwarfs, which are doomed to be gobbled up by their parent stars.
Core of Galaxy NGC 4261- Artist Concept  This is an illustration of how the night sky might look to a dweller in the core of galaxy NGC 4261, which harbors an 800-light-year-wide disk of dust and 1.2 billion-solar-mass black hole. This imaginary view is from a hypothetical planet inside the dust dusk, looking toward the black hole. The black hole's white-hot glow from super-heated gas is reddened by intervening dust. Illustration of Comet-Like Objects Racing Through the Cartwheel Galaxy's Core  This artist's illustration offers a 'window seat' view of comet-like clouds of gas racing through the heart of the Cartwheel galaxy at 700,000 mph. The large orange and yellow pancake-like object is the galaxy's core, and the white streaks along its edges are the comet-like objects. The objects probably were spawned by a collision between high-speed and slow-moving material. Artist's View of a Black Hole in a Globular Cluster  Medium-size black holes actually do exist but scientists had to look in some unexpected places to find them. The previously undiscovered black holes provide an important link that sheds light on the way in which black holes grow. Even more odd, these new black holes were found in the cores of glittering, "beehive" swarms of stars called globular star clusters, which orbit our Milky Way and other galaxies.
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