Space News/UFO's Etc...(Discussion/Pics/Vids)

[ilan]

A super flash from a star and a supermassive black hole
Weizmann Institute of Science | December 15, 2016

The brightest flash of light in the cosmos could be a rare event involving a star and a supermassive black hole


In just the right conditions, the destruction of a star in a black hole's gravitational tide should produce an unusual flash of light.
Credit: Chandra/Harvard

When astronomers and astrophysicists observe flashes of light in the dark sky, they assume they have seen a supernova. Possibly a star has burnt up its supply of nuclear fuel and collapsed, throwing off its outer layers into space; or maybe a dense white dwarf siphoned off material from a companion star until it exploded from excess weight. But a flash of light observed on June 14, 2015 did not fit any of the usual models.

For one thing, the intensity of the light was double that of the brightest supernova recorded up to that point. So astrophysicists were already asking what process could have caused it. And there were other anomalies, as well: Rather than gradually cooling, which is what happens in the average supernova, the temperature of the material emitting radiation went down -- and then up again, remaining at the higher level for quite a while. And the site of the flash was a puzzle, as well: Supernovae tend to occur in young, "blue" galaxies, but this one took place in an old "red" galaxy, in which the stars were not really candidates for exploding.

Postdoctoral fellow Giorgos Leloudas and Prof. Avishay Gal-Yam of the Particle Physics and Astrophysics Department of the Weizmann Institute of Science investigated. Together with colleagues at the Institute, Drs. Paul Vreeswijk, Ofer Yaron and Steve Schulze, Joel Johannson, and Ira Bar, as well as researchers around the world, they closely observed, measured and recorded the event. This led them to the discovery that the spectrum of the light had changed several times, and the hypothesis they formed based on this finding was that they had observed an extremely rare event: the destruction of a star by the gravitational tides of a black hole at the center of its galaxy.

The flash had, in fact, come from the middle of that distant galaxy, and further analysis suggested that the observations fit what is known about stars being caught in a black hole's gravitational tide.

The reason such an event, producing such a bright flash, is so rare is that two conditions must be met for it to occur: The star must stray close enough to the black hole to cross its "event horizon" -- the point at which it cannot escape the pull of the giant mass -- but the light produced in its destruction must somehow escape the black hole's all-consuming gravity. And for these conditions to occur, the galaxy's central black hole, which is immense even by black-hole standards, must be rotating at a relativistic speed -- close to the speed of light.

Observing the light over several months, the team came to the conclusion that the best explanation for the unusual flash of light was, indeed, the destruction of a star caught in the gravitational tides of an exceptionally massive black hole rotating extremely rapidly.

[Kimbo]

Awesome!!!Just Awesome!!!

[ilan]

Amazing stuff... The black hole got most of it!

[Capt.Kangaroo]

With the new Snow backgrounds, it looks like shooting stars here on the space pics.
Cool.

[crazed 9.6]

ahh yea, so cool Captain.
I did not see it at first till I waited for the snow to reach the first pic at top of page..

cool

[ilan]

The flakes got my tablet wet

[Marley]

man i want same meds your all on

[ilan]

Hubble Images Tangled Web in Nearby Galaxy
Kimberly Burtnyk, Sky&Telescope | December 15, 2016

A Hubble image of a nearby, massive elliptical galaxy (NGC 4696) reveals tenuous filaments that appear to be connected to the growth of the galaxy's supermassive black hole.

The latest Hubble Space Telescope image of the huge and unusual elliptical galaxy, NGC 4696, has revealed in greater detail than ever before the intricate web of hot, glowing gas across a 30,000 light-year region near the galaxy’s core. The close-up look at these gossamer gas filaments is helping astronomers understand the dynamics that occur around the supermassive black holes chowing down on gas.

This picture, taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, shows NGC 4696, the largest, brightest, and centralmost galaxy in the Centaurus Cluster. The new images taken with Hubble show the dusty filaments surrounding the centre of this huge galaxy in greater detail than ever before.
NASA / ESA / Hubble / A. Fabian

The Tangled Threads within NGC 4696

NGC 4696 is a bright and massive galaxy at the center of the Centaurus cluster, 150 million light-years from Earth. It’s also an active galaxy, its brightness powered by a supermassive black hole lurking in its heart.

The region shown above has been of interest to astronomers for decades. Elliptical galaxies are typically amorphous, featureless, and nearly spherical assemblages of stars, devoid of spiral arms and, often, recent star formation. Early on astronomers discovered that NGC 4696 possesses a massive dust lane arcing across its nucleus. Later images revealed the even more intricate nebulosity present in this central region. These curious features have made NGC4696 an object of great interest to astronomers.
NGC 4696 wide-field view

Hubble last imaged NGC4696 in 2010. Now, this new look zooms in on the central part of the galaxy. The image reveals, in finer detail than ever before, the 30,000-light-year-long dust lane crossing the galaxy’s face, as well as the more recently discovered threads of glowing nebulae woven throughout the region.

A wide-field view of the bright and massive elliptical galaxy, NGC 4696.
Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey

Each filament of hot, glowing gas in this image is about 200 light-years across. Astronomers believe that the filaments themselves may consist of many even smaller threads.

Striking in their shape and extent, these delicate strands are 100 times longer than they are wide, and yet they live dangerously close (in cosmic terms) to the heart of an active galaxy.

Survival of the Filaments

The supermassive black hole at the center of NGC 4696 doesn’t just consume a lot of matter; it also belches out a lot of energy in the form of jets. These jets inflate bubbles filled with energetic particles that balloon out thousands of light years. The bubbles ought to have expanded through the volume that contains the filaments. Why doesn’t the expanding wake of energy shred them, dispelling their material throughout the galaxy?

It could be that the radio bubbles, despite their seemingly inhospitable environments, actually create filaments. The bubble’s magnetic fields appear to be channeling hot gas into narrow regions. Then as the bubbles expand away from the galaxy’s center, the channels of gas stretch out like taffy.

Andrew Fabian (Cambridge University, UK) and colleagues saw a similar situation in NGC 1275, a bright elliptical galaxy that also features radio bubbles and filaments within them. NGC 1275 sits at the center of the Perseus Cluster. The filament-creating process may be common to the bright, central members of galaxy clusters.
NGC 1275

NGC is the brightest, most massive, and centralmost galaxy of the Perseus Cluster. It, too, is surrounded by thin filaments. Read more in this October 2013 Astronomy Picture of the Day.
Image: Hubble Legacy Archive / ESA / NASA, Processing: Al Kelly

Future Study

“What would be even more interesting would be to resolve the structure near the supermassive black hole," says Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo (University of Montreal, Canada), who also studies supermassive black hole feedback. "Is the swirl still present on smaller scales? How far down do filaments go? Down to the black hole?"

Luckily, NGC 4696 is particularly well-suited for such study. Because it’s much closer than other massive ellipticals, sharper images of filaments and other structures close to the heart of its central black hole will no doubt shed new light on the dynamics of radio bubbles and glowing gas filaments in massive elliptical galaxies.

[Capt.Kangaroo]

[ilan]

I suspect something was supposed to be here!