A supermassive black hole lurking deep in the heart of a distant active galaxy has been probed more closely than ever before by a team of astronomers that includes Penn State Professor of Astronomy Niel Brandt. Using new X-ray data from the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton satellite, the team observed the galaxy — known as 1H0707-495 — for four 48-hour-long periods, revealing the innermost depths of the galaxy. "We now can start to map out the region immediately around the black hole," says Andrew Fabian of the University of Cambridge, who headed the observations and analysis. A research paper describing the team's discoveries will be published on 28 May 2009 in the journal Nature.