Monster Black Holes

At the heart of most large galaxies lurks a monster: a supermassive black hole, millions of solar masses scrunched down to a singularity, with an event horizon smaller than our solar system.

These active galactic nuclei, or AGN, are so massive, and their gravitational fields so strong, they rip apart nearby stars and emit huge amounts of energy.

I produced this video for the University of Sydney's MOOC, Data Driven Astronomy: https://www.coursera.org/learn/data-d...

Huge thanks to Dr Elizabeth Mahoney at the University of Sydney who worked on the script.

Credits:
NASA content sourced from NASA and its entities (NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (Conceptual Image Lab, Goddard Media Studios, Scientific Visualization Studio, Fermi Gamma-ray Telescope), The Space Telescope Science Institute and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory)

The Milky Way Galaxy by Bruno Gilli/ESO
http://www.eso.org/public/images/milk...

The Infrared Milky Way, courtesy IPAC/Caltech & University of Massachusetts http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass/gal...

The Milky Way Panorama, ESO/S. Brunier
http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0...

A Colour All-Sky Image from the GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky MWA (GLEAM) survey, Natasha Hurley-Walker (Curtin University / International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research) and the GLEAM team, used with permission

Arecibo Observatory Aerial View, H. Schweiker/WIYN and NOAO/AURA/NSF
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasablu...

Centaurus A — Optical Image, ESO/WFI/M.Rejkuba et al; Radio Image of Centaurus A, NSF/VLA/Univ. Hertfordshire/M.Hardcastle; X-Ray image, NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Kraft et al; Composite image: X-ray:
NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Kraft et al; Radio: NSF/VLA/Univ.Hertfordshire/M.Hardcastle; Optical: ESO/WFI/
M.Rejkuba et al — all at http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2008...