An article published in the journal “Science” describes a study of the galaxy W2246-0526, the brightest known. A team of researchers used the ALMA radio telescope to examine it by uncovering streams of materials as they are stripped from three smaller galaxies orbiting it. In one case a “tidal tail” is generated, a large stram of materials that connects W2246-0526 with one of its satellites. According to an article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” the supermassive black hole at its center has a mass that’s about 4 billion times the Sun’s.

An article published in the journal “Nature” describes the discovery of five pairs of supermassive black holes in galaxies in the final stages of mergers. A team of researchers coordinated by the University of Maryland used data gathered at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii and in over twenty years by the Hubbble space telescope to find out these cases among hundreds of galaxies selected from those with strong X-ray emissions detected by the Swift space telescope.

An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” describes the observation of a sort of galactic fountain of cold molecular gas pumped by a supermassive black hole in the brightest galaxy of the galaxy cluster Abell 2597. A team of researchers used the ALMA radio telescope and the MUSE spectrograph mounted on ESO’s VLT to observe for the first time a cycle that includes both inflow and outflow that powers that fountain.