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Funding Menu

  * Overview
  * Fund Your Research
    Search for Funding
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    Learn About Funding
    Policies and Procedures
    Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG)
    Programs for Small Businesses
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Exploring Black Holes

Exploring Black Holes

  * What is a black hole?
  * How are black holes studied?
      + Learn how
      + Event Horizon Telescope
      + LIGO
      + Andrea Ghez and the UCLA Galactic Center Group
      + NRAO
      + NOIRLab
      + Green Bank Observatory
      + South Pole Telescope
  * Images, video, and educational resources

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Heart of galaxy NGC 1068

Credit: NRAO/AUI/National Science Foundation; S. Dagnello

Black holes have long captured the imagination, from groundbreaking
ideas in Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity to the first
image of a black hole, revealed a century later by the global Event
Horizon Telescope.  On this site, explore the nature of black holes,
read the latest news about black hole research, and download a wide
range of educational materials, images and videos of the universe's
most extreme objects.

All Sag A* multimedia -- including new images, video content and a
b-roll package is available for download on the EHT page.

Black hole hidden within own exhaust

Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF; D. Berry/Skyworks

What is a black hole?

What is a black hole?

Black holes are extremely dense pockets of matter, objects of such
incredible mass and miniscule volume that they drastically warp the
fabric of space-time. Anything that passes too close, from a
wandering star to a photon of light, gets captured. Most black holes
are the condensed remnants of a massive star, the collapsed core that
remains following an explosive supernova. However, the black hole
family tree has several branches, from tiny structures on par with a
human cell to enormous giants billions of times more massive than our
sun.

Learn more about black holes
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