Several hundred astronomers have gathered in San Francisco this week for a meeting of the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society.

This meeting is a debut party of a sort for Suzaku. There are quite a few presentations of scientific results obtained from Suzaku data during the meeting. It is true that Suzaku data were shown at previous conferences. But they were more for show - pretty pictures, or what passes for pretty pictures among X-ray astronomers. That is because it takes time for scientists to understand the characteristics of any new instruments. Now they do know and understand how the instruments behave. So they can go beyond showing data and start doing science with them.

Some of the most interesting results are on black holes at the center of galaxies. Results obtained by three separate teams were presented at a press conference at noon PDT on October 5.

• Read about these discoveries in "the Suzaku Discovery" section of the learning center.
• Read the NASA press release

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