Scientists Reveal Secrets to Burping Black Hole with the Green Bank Telescope

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The National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Telescope (GBT) has revealed new information about mysterious radio bubbles surrounding a supermassive black hole.  

Observations by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (left image) and by GBO’s MUSTANG-2 instrument (right image) clearly show the enormous cavities (highlighted with gray circles) excavated by the powerful radio jets (green contours) expelled from the black hole at the center of galaxy cluster MS0735. The green contours in both images are from observations performed by the Naval Research Laboratory’s VLA Low-band Ionosphere and Transient Experiment (VLITE) back end used on the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s (NRAO) Very Large Array (VLA).
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NASA DART Imagery Produced with GBT Data Shows Changed Orbit of Target Asteroid

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Analysis of data obtained over the past two weeks by NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) investigation team shows the spacecraft’s kinetic impact with its target asteroid, Dimorphos, successfully altered the asteroid’s orbit. This marks humanity’s first time purposely changing the motion of a celestial object and the first full-scale demonstration of asteroid deflection technology. Images such as the below helped scientists understand the orbit change resulting from DART’s impact.

The yellow box shows the asteroid Didymos. The images are views of the Didymos and Dimorphos binary asteroid system obtained from radar facilities at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Goldstone planetary radar in California and the National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. Shown at left are Oct. 4, 2022, observations from Goldstone observations; at right are combined Goldstone and Green Bank observations from Oct. 9, 2022. Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/JPL/NASA JPL Goldstone Planetary Radar/National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Observatory.
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PhysCon Undergrads See Bright Future From Green Bank Telescope

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This October, students attending the triennial PhysCon conference embarked on an adventurous detour to the National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Telescope (GBT). 

Nearly 900 undergraduate astronomy and physics majors from across North America came together in Washington, D.C. for PhysCon, hosted by the Society of Physics Students (SPS) and its associated honor society, Sigma Pi Sigma. 

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