intermediate-mass black hole tagged posts

Rare blue optical transient points to possible new class of cosmic explosion

Chinese astronomers discover a peculiar optical transient displaying unique emission properties
Artist’s conception illustrating the aftermath of an intermediate-mass black hole tearing apart a passing star, resulting in an accretion disk and narrow relativistic jet (top left). The dotted line indicates our line of sight from Earth. The jet’s off-axis afterglow only became visible once the expanding radio emission (bottom right) had grown wide enough to sweep into our line of sight, causing that emission to brighten dramatically years after the initial event. Credit: NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/M.Weiss

Chinese astronomers report the detection of a peculiar optical transient event that occurred in the center of a dwarf galaxy. The newly discovered event, designated AT2019ijncn a paper published July 6 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

One of the rarest transients
Among astronomical tra...

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Death of a Star reveals Midsize Black Hole lurking in a Dwarf Galaxy

at2020neh_hst-500.jpg
Astronomers discovered a star being ripped apart by a black hole in the galaxy SDSS J152120.07+140410.5, 850 million light years away. Researchers pointed NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to examine the aftermath, called AT 2020neh, which is shown in the center of the image. Hubble’s ultraviolet camera saw a ring of stars being formed around the nucleus of the galaxy where AT 2020neh is located. (Credit: NASA, ESA, Ryan Foley/UC Santa Cruz)

An intermediate-mass black hole lurking undetected in a dwarf galaxy revealed itself to astronomers when it gobbled up an unlucky star that strayed too close...

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