An extraordinary outburst produced by a
black hole in a nearby galaxy has provided direct evidence for a population of
old, volatile stellar black holes. The discovery, made by astronomers using data
from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, provides new insight into the nature of
a mysterious class of black holes that can produce as much energy in X-rays as
a million suns radiate at all wavelengths.
Researchers used Chandra to discover a
new ultraluminous X-ray source, or ULX. These objects give off more X-rays than
most binary systems, in which a companion star orbits the remains of a
collapsed star. These collapsed stars form either a dense core called a neutron
star or a black hole. The extra X-ray emission suggests ULXs contain black
holes that might be much more massive than the ones found elsewhere in our
galaxy.
A paper describing these results will
appear in the May 10, 2012, issue of The Astrophysical Journal.
Image
Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Curtin University/R. Soria et al., Optical:
NASA/STScI/ Middlebury College/F. Winkler et al.
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