---

Queen's scientists discover black hole ripping apart star

May 04, 2012

Astronomers from Queen's University Belfast have gathered the most direct evidence yet of a supermassive black hole shredding a star that wandered too close. The Queen's astronomers are part of the Pan-STARRS international team, whose discovery has been published in the journal Nature today (Wed, 2 May).

Supermassive black holes, weighing millions to billions times more than the Sun, lurk in the centers of most galaxies. These hefty monsters lie quietly until an unsuspecting 'victim', such as a star, wanders close enough to get ripped apart by their powerful gravitational clutches.

Using a slew of ground and space-based telescopes, a team of astronomers led by Suvi Gezari of The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, has identified the victim in this case as a star rich in helium gas. The star resides in a galaxy 2.7 billion light-years away.

The observation yields insights about the harsh environment around black holes and the types of stars swirling around them.

Speaking about the discovery Professor Stephen Smartt of Queen's Astrophysics Research Centre in the School of Maths and Physics said: "Astronomers have spotted these stellar 'murders' before, but this is the first time they can identify the victim.

"What we're seeing is a star being shredded by a monster black-hole in the centre of this distant galaxy. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way has a black hole at its centre, about a million times the mass of the sun. We can see stars whizzing around our Milky Way black hole, but they are too far away from it to be captured.

"In this case a star got too close to the black hole and was sucked right in. We're seeing the star being shredded, heated and destroyed and as it swirls around the black hole. Suvi Gezari, team leader from John Hopkins University in Baltimore, alerted us to something unusual caught by the NASA spacecraft called GALEX, and as our computers sifted through terabytes of Pan-STARRS data, we found the tell-tale signature of the event. We knew it was something weird then."

To find this one event, the team monitored hundreds of thousands of galaxies in ultraviolet light with the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), a space-based observatory, and in visible light with the Pan-STARRS1 telescope on the summit of Haleakala, in Hawaii. Pan-STARRS, short for Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, scans the entire night sky for all kinds of transient phenomena, including supernovae.

The team was looking for a bright flare in ultraviolet light from the nucleus of a galaxy with a previously dormant black hole. They found one in June 2010, which was spotted with both telescopes. Both telescopes continued to monitor the flare as it reached peak brightness a month later, and then slowly began to fade over the next 12 months. The brightening event was similar to that of a supernova, but the rise to the peak was much slower, taking nearly one and a half months.

Team leader, Suvi Gezari from The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. said: "This is the first time where we have so many pieces of evidence, and now we can put them all together to weigh the perpetrator (the black hole) and determine the identity of the unlucky star that fell victim to it. These observations also give us clues to what evidence to look for in the future to find this type of event."

Queen's University Belfast

Related Black Hole Current Events and Black Hole News Articles

New mathematical model links space-time theories
Researchers at the University of Southampton have taken a significant step in a project to unravel the secrets of the structure of our Universe.

High-energy astrophysics puzzle
Blazars are the brightest of active galactic nuclei, and many emit very high-energy gamma rays. New observations of a blazar known as PKS 1424+240 show that it is the most-distant known source of very high-energy gamma rays. But its emission spectrum appears highly unusual.

University of Toronto-led study provides new insight into photosynthesis
Pigments found in plants and purple bacteria employed to provide protection from sun damage do more than just that.

Supernova remnant 1987A continues to reveal its secrets
A team of astronomers led by the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) have succeeded in observing the death throws of a giant star in unprecedented detail.

'Sideline quasars' helped to stifle early galaxy formation, says CU-Boulder study
University of Colorado Boulder astronomers targeting one of the brightest quasars glowing in the universe some 11 billion years ago say "sideline quasars" likely teamed up with it to heat abundant helium gas billions of years ago, preventing small galaxy formation.

Extremely rare triple quasar found
For only the second time in history, a team of scientists--including Carnegie's Michele Fumagalli--have discovered an extremely rare triple quasar system. Their work is published by Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Curtains down for the black hole firewall paradox
Research by scientists at the University of York has revealed new insights into the life and death of black holes.

CSI: Milky Way
These days the core of the Milky Way galaxy is a pretty tame place...cosmically speaking. The galactic black hole at the center is a sleeping giant.

Supermassive black hole spins super-fast
Imagine a sphere more than 2 million miles across - eight times the distance from Earth to the Moon - spinning so fast that its surface is traveling at nearly the speed of light. Such an object exists: the supermassive black hole at the center of the spiral galaxy NGC 1365.

Journey to the Limits of Spacetime
Voracious absences at the center of galaxies, black holes shape the growth and death of the stars around them through their powerful gravitational pull and explosive ejections of energy.

---

More Black Hole Current Events and Black Hole News Articles

---