Sophisticated computer analysis of 20 years of data from the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array radio telescope has revealed evidence of hot bubbles in the dense, rapidly-spinning disk of material being sucked into a massive black hole 26,000 light-years distant at the heart of our own Milky Way Galaxy, astronomers announced.

A project to expand the National Science Foundation’s famed Very Large Array radio telescope has received strong endorsement from a prestigious national panel of astronomers given the task of setting priorities for astronomical projects in the next decade.

A distinguished panel of scientists today announced their support for the continued funding of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array Project at a press conference given by the National Academy of Sciences.

The US and European partners in the Atacama Large Millimeter Array project have awarded contracts to US and Italian firms, respectively, for two prototype antennas.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory will close down its millimeter-wavelength telescope on Kitt Peak, Arizona, in July 2000, Director Paul Vanden Bout announced today.

A disk of water molecules orbiting a supermassive black hole at the core of a galaxy 60 million light-years away is reverberating in response to variations in the energy output from the galaxy’s powerful central engine close to the black hole.