Saturday, January 11

Black Holes

Hubble Finds Messier 4 Black Hole 6,000 Light Years Away
Black Holes, NASA

Hubble Finds Messier 4 Black Hole 6,000 Light Years Away

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have found solid evidence of rare class "intermediate-sized" black hole about 6,000 light years away from us.The black hole is located in a globular star cluster in Messier 4 (M4). Although the object cannot be seen, it's mass is possibly around 800 solar masses. This mass was calculated by studying the motion of stars caught near the black hole. Also, it's important to note that astronomers looked at 12 years worth of Messier 4 data from Hubble.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzF3eFN-WdEEduardo Virtal, of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Balimore, Maryland, had this to say: "We have good confidence that we have a very tiny region with a lot of concentrated mass. It's about three times smaller than the densest dark mass t...
Astronomers Find “Scary Barbie” Black Hole Ripping Apart Huge Star
Black Holes

Astronomers Find “Scary Barbie” Black Hole Ripping Apart Huge Star

Astronomers have found another supermassive black hole, and this time it's being called "Scary Barbie".It's being called one of the "most luminous, energetic, long-lasting transient objects" found in the night sky. This just shows no matter how much we know about the sky above us, we are always learning more. Purdue University graduate student, Bhagya Subrayan, said researchers believe the black hole "pulled in a star and ripped it apart". The black hole was originally called "ZTF20abrbeie", which eventually led to the nickname "Scary Barbie".To help find the object, researchers used the Recommender Engine For Intelligent Transient Tracking engine (REFITT). This artificial intelligence technology looks at alerts to help researchers find interesting things in space.What's even ...
New NASA Animation Shows True Size of Black Holes
NASA, Black Holes

New NASA Animation Shows True Size of Black Holes

Somewhere out there in the stars are black holes - a monstrous points in space time where gravity is so strong that nothing can escape it. These things are scary, since they consume everything in their path. The closest one is known as Gaia BH1 - located 1,560 light year away from us.A new video by NASA shows shows us the biggest ones we know of. The video starts of from our own sun, and pans out to show different black holes. In the video, NASA shows ten different supersized black holes. They range from a one in the center of the J1601+3113 galaxy, to the more widely known Sagittarius A.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU1DsipURcM&ab_channel=NASAGoddardThankfully, none of these will come close to us anytime soon. Also, it's cool to note the video also does an amazing ...