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Related: About this forumBirth of a black hole witnessed for first time
The Cow, nestled in the corner of galaxy CGCG137-068, 200 million light-years away, was seen by the WM Keck Observatory.
By Jason Goodyer
21st February, 2019 at 00:00
Last June, astronomers noticed the appearance of a mysterious bright object in the constellation of Hercules. It remained visible for a little over two weeks, during which time they dubbed it the Cow. Now, scientists investigating the phenomenon believe that what astronomers witnessed was the formation of a black hole or a neutron star.
When stars burn off all their energy, they either explode in a nova or supernova, or collapse to form a white dwarf, a neutron star or a black hole, depending on their mass. When the Cow was spotted, astronomers thought the bright light must be coming from a supernova. But the Cow burned faster and brighter than any previously observed supernova, so a team led by Dr Raffaella Margutti of the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics at Northwestern University in Illinois decided to investigate further.
We know from theory that black holes and neutron stars form when a star dies, but weve never seen them right after theyre born, said Margutti.
The researchers gathered data from several telescopes the WM Keck Observatory in Hawaii, the MMT Observatory in Arizona, the SoAR Telescope in Chile, the Very Large Array in New Mexico, and the NuSTAR and XMM-Newton space observatories to study various wavelengths of light coming from the Cow. By combining the views from each of these telescopes and helped by the fact that theres little ejected material orbiting the Cow the team were able to peer into the object to its central radiation source and conclude that it must be a newborn black hole or neutron star.
More:
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/birth-of-a-black-hole-witnessed-for-first-time/
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Birth of a black hole witnessed for first time (Original Post)
Judi Lynn
Feb 2019
OP
Laffy Kat
(16,383 posts)1. Fascinating. Love this stuff even though it is so over my head.
"200 million light years away"! I can't begin to wrap my brain around that.
qazplm135
(7,447 posts)2. thing is...
that's relatively close when you consider that the visible universe is almost 100 billion light years across.