DrCaleb DrCaleb:
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Milky Way's black hole just flared, growing 75 times as bright for a few hours
Even though the black hole at the center of the Milky Way is a monster, it's still rather quiet. Called Sagittarius A*, it's about 4.6 million times more massive than the sun. Usually, it's a brooding behemoth. But scientists observing Sgr. A* with the Keck Telescope just observed its brightness blooming to over 75 times normal for a few hours.
The flaring is not visible in optical light. It's all happening in the near-infrared, the portion of the infrared spectrum closest to optical light. Astronomers have been watching Sgr. A* for 20 years, and though the black hole does have some variability in its output, this flaring event is like nothing astronomers have observed before. This peak was over twice as bright as the previous peak flux level.
These results are being reported in the Astrophysical Journal Letters in a paper titled "Unprecedented variability of Sgr A* in NIR," and is available at the prepress site arXiv.org. The lead author is Tuan Do, an astronomer at UCLA.
The team saw Sgr. A* flaring at 75 times normal for a two-hour period on May 13th. At first, astronomer Tuan Do thought that they were seeing a star called SO-2 rather than Sgr. A*. SO-2 is one of a group of stars called S-stars that orbits the black hole closely. Astronomers have been keeping an eye on it as it orbits the black hole.
Here's a timelapse of images over 2.5 hr from May from @keckobservatory of the supermassive black hole Sgr A*. The black hole is always variable, but this was the brightest we've seen in the infrared so far. It was probably even brighter before we started observing that night! pic.twitter.com/MwXioZ7twV
— Tuan Do (@quantumpenguin) August 11, 2019
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Four images from the paper. Over about a 2 hour period, Sgr A* flared to 75 times normal, and twice as bright as any other observed peak. At first, astronomers thought they were looking at the S star SO-2. Credit: Do et al; 2019.
Even though the black hole at the center of the Milky Way is a monster, it's still rather quiet. Called Sagittarius A*, it's about 4.6 million times more massive than the sun. Usually, it's a brooding behemoth. But scientists observing Sgr. A* with the Keck Telescope just observed its brightness blooming to over 75 times normal for a few hours.
The flaring is not visible in optical light. It's all happening in the near-infrared, the portion of the infrared spectrum closest to optical light. Astronomers have been watching Sgr. A* for 20 years, and though the black hole does have some variability in its output, this flaring event is like nothing astronomers have observed before. This peak was over twice as bright as the previous peak flux level.
These results are being reported in the Astrophysical Journal Letters in a paper titled "Unprecedented variability of Sgr A* in NIR," and is available at the prepress site arXiv.org. The lead author is Tuan Do, an astronomer at UCLA.
The team saw Sgr. A* flaring at 75 times normal for a two-hour period on May 13th. At first, astronomer Tuan Do thought that they were seeing a star called SO-2 rather than Sgr. A*. SO-2 is one of a group of stars called S-stars that orbits the black hole closely. Astronomers have been keeping an eye on it as it orbits the black hole.
Here's a timelapse of images over 2.5 hr from May from @keckobservatory of the supermassive black hole Sgr A*. The black hole is always variable, but this was the brightest we've seen in the infrared so far. It was probably even brighter before we started observing that night! pic.twitter.com/MwXioZ7twV
— Tuan Do (@quantumpenguin) August 11, 2019
https://phys.org/news/2019-08-milky-bla ... right.html
Oh come on the Black Hole farted and now scientist are letting the whole world know. How embarrassing for the Black Hole.
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