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Astronomers Precisely Measure a Black Hole's Accretion Disk

Actively feeding supermassive black holes are known as quasars, and they can outshine all the stars of their host galaxy. Part of their brightness comes from the accretion disk surrounding the black hole, but they're hard to image directly because quasars are so far away. New data from one of the world's largest telescopes has managed this feat, detecting near-infrared emission lines that mark significant regions in the accretion disk in a quasar.

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