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The XRISM Resolve spectrum of the galactic neutron star X-ray binary, GX 13+1, reveals one of the densest winds ever seen in absorption lines.

A rapidly growing black hole in a very active phase has been observed with JWST ~1.5 billion years after the Big Bang. Bright in X-rays, it is accreting at a rate 4,000% in excess of the Eddington limit, offering insights into early black hole growth.

In 1916 Arthur Eddington, at the age of 34, was Plumian Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge, director of the university observatory and Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society. This piece, contributed for the then equivalent of News and Views was one of the earliest simplified expositions of the General Theory in English. The author's name was inscribed over the first paragraph by the editor, Sir Norman Lockyer.

Cosmological simulations show that tiny black holes that formed from the first stars can grow far faster than expected to become the seeds of the supermassive black holes now observed by JWST at cosmic dawn.

Coordinated X-ray and radio observations reveal that disk winds and jets occur mutually exclusively in 4U 1630–472, providing new observational constraints on the interplay between different modes of outflow in X-ray binaries.

A dormant supermassive black hole at high redshift that is substantially overmassive relative to its host galaxy has been detected, indicating a much larger population of dormant black holes around the epoch of reionization.

Little Red Dots (LRDs) are a high-redshift galaxy population with unclear nature. Here, authors show CANUCS-LRD-z8.6, a spectroscopically confirmed LRD, hosting an active galactic nucleus, and its properties provide insights for early black hole and galaxy formation.

An extensive analysis of the JWST-NIRSpec spectrum of GN-z11 shows a supermassive black hole of a few million solar masses in a galaxy 440 million years after the Big Bang.

An uncharacteristically long stellar disruption from a supermassive black hole has been unravelling over the last decade. Spectral information implies very efficient accretion but recent observations hint at a transition to a less extreme accretion mode.

Black-hole masses are estimated from broad emission-line widths and luminosity. Here, the authors show that over decades the luminosity varies while line widths remain constant biasing mass estimates, but using narrow-line luminosity corrects this.

Using the GRAVITY+ instrument, dynamical measurement of the black hole mass in a quasar at a redshift of 2.3 (11 billion years ago) shows how the relationship between galaxies and black holes evolves with time.

A new ultraluminous X-ray source has been discovered in M 31, whose variability and associated bright, compact radio emission identify it as a stellar-mass black hole accreting close to the Eddington limit.

Two high-redshift post-starburst galaxies are in the process of quenching, although their quasars remain active, indicating the complex co-evolution between black hole activity and star formation.

A JWST/MIRI spectrum of an early quasar in the mid-infrared indicates that J1120+0641 had a mature feeding structure 760 Myr after the Big Bang. This finding suggests that supermassive black holes and their torii build up surprisingly quickly.

The highest-quality JWST spectra reveal that little red dots are young supermassive black holes shrouded in dense cocoons of ionized gas, where electron scattering, not Doppler motions, broadens their spectral lines.

Ultra-high-energy gamma-ray emission from the microquasar V4641 Sagittarii is reported, suggesting that large-scale jets from microquasars could be more common than previously thought and also could be a notable source of galactic cosmic rays.

Observations of a luminous quasar from the high-resolution spectrometer Resolve aboard XRISM revealed highly inhomogeneous wind structure outflowing from a supermassive black hole, which probably consists of up to a million clumps.

The accretion geometry of X-ray binary Cygnus X-3 is determined here from IXPE observations. X-ray polarization reveals a narrow funnel with reflecting walls, which focuses emission, making Cyg X-3 appear as an ultraluminous X-ray source.

JWST/NIRSpec observations of Abell2744-QSO1 show a high black-hole-to-host mass ratio in the early Universe, which indicates that we are seeing the black hole in a phase of rapid growth, accreting at 30% of the Eddington limit.

Deep X-ray limits are placed on the source of the closest fast radio burst, FRB 20200120E, ruling out an ultraluminous X-ray source or a young extragalactic pulsar embedded in a Crab-like nebula as its origin.

Ultraluminous X-ray sources are extragalactic objects located outside the nucleus of the host galaxy with bolometric luminosities exceeding 10³⁹ erg s⁻¹. These extreme luminosities imply the presence of an accreting black hole with a mass of ∼10²–10⁵ solar masses, but the existence of such intermediate mass black holes is in dispute. A variable X-ray source with an implied mass of ∼500 solar masses is now reported in the galaxy ESO 243–49.

An unusual ultraviolet compact object associated with a dusty starburst has been observed at a redshift of about 7.2, with a luminosity that falls between that of quasars and galaxies, possibly in transition between the two. 

An extreme flare has been seen from a supermassive black hole at redshift z = 2.6. First detected in 2018, it is 30 times brighter than similar events. The most likely cause is the shredding of a star of 30 solar masses or more.

A sophisticated suite of cosmological simulations shows that the interplay between the growth of cold gas, which intrinsically varies due to halo assembly bias, and the feedback from active galactic nuclei can explain the observed bimodality in the colours of galaxies as a function of their halo mass.

A black hole at the centre of a quasar at a redshift of z = 4 is accreting the mass of the Sun every day. The quasar’s extreme luminosity is equivalent to 50,000 times that of the Milky Way. Its broad-line region should be resolvable observationally and will provide an important test for broad-line region size–luminosity relationships.

A delayed radio flare six months after an optically discovered tidal disruption event, followed by a second and brighter flare, years later, may potentially be due to the delayed ejection of an outflow following a transition in accretion states.

A millihertz frequency X-ray quasi-periodic oscillation has been observed near the innermost orbit of an actively accreting supermassive black hole and its frequency has evolved significantly over 2 years, a phenomenon that is difficult to explain with existing models.

Observations of a jet from a strongly magnetized neutron star reveal that strong magnetic fields do not prevent jet formation and suggest that stellar properties influence jet power.

The relativistic jets associated with the black-hole X-ray binary system V404 Cygni change their orientation on time scales of minutes to hours, implying that the direction of the jets is being affected by the dynamics of the surrounding accretion flow that powers them.

By modelling the radio, optical, UV and X-ray data of the unusually bright cosmological explosion AT 2022cmc, Pasham et al. argue for the presence of a highly collimated jet moving at ≳99.99% the speed of light.

Galaxy GSN 069 has unprecedented eruptions of X-ray light every nine hours, which indicate fast transitions between cold and warm states and may shed light on black hole accretion.

The rapid rise in brightness of a tidal disruption event is attributed to the destruction of a main sequence star by a black hole of intermediate mass in a dwarf galaxy. Such events are rare, and non-accreting intermediate-mass black holes are challenging to find.

The discovery of a distant blazar J0410−0139 at z = 7 suggests that many similar sources existed in the early Universe, supporting the hypothesis that the rapid growth of black holes is driven by jet-enhanced or obscured accretion.

The detection and modelling of nine X-ray quasi-periodic eruptions from a nearby tidal disruption event shows that these eruptions arise in accretion disks around massive black holes, left behind by tidally disrupted stars, and that an orbiting body colliding with this disk is a plausible explanation for the X-ray variability.

A stripped-envelope supernova, SN 2022jli, shows 12.4-day periodic undulations during the declining light curve, and narrow Hα emission is detected in late-time spectra with concordant periodic velocity shifts.