The Hublle Space Telescope teams and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, both from NASA, recorded an image that may be the evidence of a new example of a rare black hole class, black holes in intermediate mass (BNMIS).
The new possible BNMI captured is located about 40,000 light years from the center of the NGC 6099 Galaxy, which in turn is about 450 million light years away from Earth in the constellation of Hercules.
This is a rare evidence of BNMI, as this is a type of black hole that is difficult to observe. While the little ones can be observed after the explosion of a star and the supermassives are often found in the center of large galaxies, intermediaries have no proven cause. One hypotheses is the fusion of smaller black holes and another talks about the energy generated from the collision of two stars.
The black hole was found from an image of 2009 generated by Chandra. Astronomers have identified an unusual source of X-ray and have followed their evolution over the years with a team of the European Space Agency (ESA).
“X-ray sources with such extreme brightness are rare outside the galaxies and can serve as a fundamental probe to identify the elusive IMBHs. They represent a crucial lost link in the evolution of black holes between stellar mass and supermassive black holes,” said lead author Yi-Chi Chang, from the National University Tsing Hua, in Hsinchu, in Hsinchu, Taiwan.
The study identified a series that they clustered near the black hole, which reached its peak visibility in 2012, indicating that it fed on stars at the time.
“If IMBH is devouring a star, how long does it take to swallow the star gas? In 2009, HLX-1 [nome do buraco negro] It was quite bright. Then, in 2012, it was about 100 times brighter. And then it has decreased again, ”said study co -author Roberto Soria, from the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (Inaf).“ So now we need to wait to see if he is exploding several times, or if there has been a start, a peak, and now he will simply decrease until disappeared. ”
See also: astronomers reveal first black hole image in the center of the Milky Way
