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Astrophysics News 8 July 2025 - 8 November 2025

Sharper Black Hole Images Could Put Einstein’s Gravity to the Test: New Study Maps What Future Telescopes Must See (7 Nov 2025)

Brighter Than 10 Trillion Suns: Record Black Hole Flare 10 Billion Light‑Years Away

Date: November 7, 2025 Key points What happened—and why this one is different A Caltech‑led team reports an extraordinary flare from the supermassive black hole in AGN J2245+3743, first seen rising dramatically in 2018 and now recognized as a record‑setter for both luminosity and distance. At peak, it shone with the light of ~10 trillion suns, unmistakably towering above the AGN’s usual variability. California Institute of Technology+1 The peer‑reviewed study, published November 4, 2025 in Nature Astronomy, quantifies just how extreme the event is: the source brightened by more than a factor of 40, radiating a cumulative ~10⁵⁴ ergs—on par
8 November 2025
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Record-Setting Black Hole Flash Dazzles Astronomers: “One-In-A-Million” Flare Blasts Light = 10 Trillion Suns

Record-Setting Black Hole Flash Dazzles Astronomers: “One-In-A-Million” Flare Blasts Light = 10 Trillion Suns

An Unprecedented Cosmic Flare On Nov. 4, 2025 astronomers worldwide were abuzz: a supermassive black hole had produced the most luminous flare ever recorded. At its peak the outburst was “30 times brighter than any prior black hole flare,” equivalent to 10 trillion Suns space.com. This “superflare” came from a galaxy over 11 billion light-years away – meaning we see it as it happened more than 10 billion years ago reuters.com space.com. In cosmic terms this was a spectacular event: “a one-in-a-million object” as Caltech’s Matthew Graham describes theriver973.iheart.com. Nature News confirms it as “the biggest black-hole outburst ever seen,” a
5 November 2025
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Alien Probe or Cosmic Relic? Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Baffles Scientists (updated 27.10.2025)

Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Stuns Scientists with Surprising Bright Outburst and Ancient Origins

A Visitor From Beyond the Solar System In July 2025, astronomers discovered something extraordinary: a dim, fuzzy comet hurtling toward the inner solar system on a path not bound to the Sun. Follow-up observations confirmed this object – now named 3I/ATLAS (for the ATLAS survey that found it) – was on a hyperbolic trajectory, meaning it came from interstellar space and would soon depart forever science.nasa.gov en.wikipedia.org. The “3I” designation marks it as the third interstellar object ever observed, after the asteroid-like 1I/ʻOumuamua and comet 2I/Borisov science.nasa.gov. Unlike ʻOumuamua (which was small, oddly shaped, and showed no coma), 3I/ATLAS immediately
4 November 2025
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Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Stuns Scientists – Brightening, Blue Glow & Mystery Acceleration

Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Stuns Scientists – Brightening, Blue Glow & Mystery Acceleration

A Mysterious Visitor from Beyond the Solar System When astronomers spotted a faint new object moving rapidly through the outer solar system in July 2025, they quickly realized it was not an ordinary comet. Its extra-high velocity and open-ended (hyperbolic) trajectory indicated it was an interstellar interloper – an object arriving from far outside the Sun’s domain scientificamerican.com. Officially designated 3I/ATLAS (“I” for interstellar, “3” as the third of its kind, and ATLAS for the survey telescope that found it theguardian.com), this comet has since commanded the full attention of the astronomical community. “We’ve never had an object like this
3 November 2025
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Rogue Planet Gobbles 6 Billion Tons of Gas per Second — Behaving Like a Star

Rogue Planet Gobbles 6 Billion Tons of Gas per Second — Behaving Like a Star

A Cosmic Feeding Frenzy Astronomers have long known that rogue planets (also called free‑floating planetary‑mass objects) drift through space without a host star sciencealert.com. Most are cold and quiet, but Cha 1107-7626 is anything but quiet. In late June 2025, it suddenly brightened dramatically. Follow-up observations revealed an EXor‑type accretion burst – a rapid feeding episode like those seen in infant stars sciencealert.com. By August, the planet’s accretion rate had skyrocketed: at its peak it was pulling in roughly 6 billion tons of cosmic gas and dust every second phys.org. This translates to about 10⁻⁷ Jupiter masses per year – an unheard‑of rate for any planet sciencealert.com. Víctor Almendros‑Abad, an
4 October 2025
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Mysterious Comet SWAN R2: New Interstellar Visitor or Oort Cloud Wanderer?

Mysterious Comet SWAN R2: New Interstellar Visitor or Oort Cloud Wanderer?

Discovery of Comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN) Comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN) was spotted in early September 2025 in a rather unconventional way – by searching for faint glows in SOHO satellite images. The SOHO spacecraft’s SWAN instrument scans the entire sky in ultraviolet light, primarily to track solar wind interaction with hydrogen. Astrophotographers and amateur astronomers often comb through these SWAN images for telltale moving smudges that betray new comets. On 11 September 2025, Ukrainian amateur Vladimir Bezugly noticed such a moving fuzzball in SWAN’s data universetoday.com. Within hours it was confirmed by others and reported, earning the provisional label “SWAN25B”
17 September 2025
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Baby Black Hole Booted Across Space: First-Ever Measurement of a Cosmic “Natal Kick”

Baby Black Hole Booted Across Space: First-Ever Measurement of a Cosmic “Natal Kick”

A Cosmic Kick: Newborn Black Hole Sent Careening Through Space On April 12, 2019, two black holes collided 2.4 billion light-years away – an event detected as gravitational-wave signal GW190412. What happened next was extraordinary: the newly merged black hole was launched across space by a “natal kick,” like a cosmic cannonball. Now in 2025, scientists have measured the speed and direction of this recoiling black hole for the first time ever livescience.com igfae.usc.es. The remnant black hole blasted off at over 50 kilometers per second (about 180,000 km/h), likely fast enough to escape the cluster of stars it came
16 September 2025
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Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS: Origin, Trajectory and Scientific Stakes In 2025’s Third‑Ever Extrasolar Visitor

Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS: Origin, Trajectory and Scientific Stakes In 2025’s Third‑Ever Extrasolar Visitor

<li ATLAS imaged the interstellar candidate on 1 July 2025, with precovery back to 14 June 2025, and it was designated C/2025 N1 (ATLAS) and later 3I/ATLAS as the third confirmed interstellar object after Oumuamua and Borisov. <li A JPL orbital solution yields eccentricity e = 6.1 ± 0.1 and hyperbolic excess velocity V∞ ≈ 58 km/s, indicating an extrasolar origin from Galactic longitude about 5° toward the Galactic Center. <li The object’s nucleus is estimated at 9–20 km in diameter, with a developing coma and tail already visible, including a compact coma at about 4.5 AU from the Sun.
8 July 2025
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