The Event Horizon Telescope has given us amazing views of the supermassive black holes at the hearts of M87 and the Milky Way. A new image from the EHT shows another black hole at the core of the radio galaxy 3C 84. Unlike the previous targets, 3C is one of the most active supermassive black holes in our vicinity, blasting enormous jets out into the cosmos. A series of images show the power of the EHT, resolving the region around the black hole where the jets form.

Although it was bound for Jupiter, NASA's Galileo spacecraft made flybys of Earth in 1990 and 1992 to get boosts in its velocity. Astronomers realized this would be an ideal opportunity to test if remote imaging of Earth would detect the presence of life. In a new paper, researchers examined over 1500 photometric measurements of Earth from Galileo, judging how well it could stand in for an inhabited exoplanet.

Comet 12P Pons-Brooks takes center stage this Spring.

Astronomers are always searching for new ways to measure distance in the Universe, especially at the greatest distances where less is known. One method measures active galaxies blasting out ultraviolet and X-ray radiation. Another measure is X-ray radiation coming from the accretion disk around a quasar. Since both methods measure the same distance to a galaxy, they should match. But they don't, and the culprit, once again, is dust absorbing and scattering UV and X-rays.