See the image above? Is it what you think it is? Why yes, indeed, it is. Just like you suspected, an image of the majestic globular omega Centauri, the largest and brightest globular cluster in the sky… what else on Earth – or outside of it – could it have been?.

Now, remember those peculiarities observed in it? Of course you do. Turns out that Eva Noyola, who also holds the record of most miles traveled for a Soda Stereo concert (6127) and is one of The MKX® favorite readers, deduced that Omega Centauri harbors an elusive intermediate-mass black hole smack at its center after analyzing some fancy photos taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys onboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and data obtained by the GMOS spectrograph on the Gemini South telescope in Chile. Well, that explains that. So we’ll update the image for something prettier (artist rendition though):

Congratulations Eva, you are now officially our smartest reader and we hope to hear about (but maybe not fully understand) more high profile astronomy discoveries from you. The other scientist, Karl Gebhardt, I can’t remember, but I’m sure I’ve had beers with him either at Eva’s parties back when she lived in Austin or perhaps at the Crown and Anchor. Congratulations to you as well!

More :

• 15 minutos
• Del agujero
• Gemini observatory article (good images)
• Hubblecast (video interview! Very awesome.)
• Slashdot