A black hole is so massive that it attracts everything that comes too close to it. Now researchers have observed for the first time how a black hole tears a star apart.
- The “TESS” space telescope has observed how a black hole tears apart a star .
- For the first time, researchers were able to observe a tidal star-tearing event almost right from the start.
- The temperature around the black hole drops by about half when the event occurs.
A black hole is so massive that it develops a very strong attraction that nothing can escape. What comes too close to a black hole is inevitably attracted and swallowed up at some point. Stars are not immune to this either. If a star comes too close to a black hole, it literally tears the star apart. The phenomenon is called the "tidal disruption event". Part of the matter leaves the star's gravitational field and forms a so-called accretion disk around the black hole - the matter of the star rotates as a disk around the black hole and slowly moves towards the center.
With the help of the NASA “TESS” space telescope, researchers have for the first time been able to observe such a phenomenon from the very beginning. At the end of January, the robotic telescopic network "ASAS-SN" detected and reported such a process. Researchers immediately set up additional telescopes to collect as much data as possible from the rare event. It turned out that "TESS", a space telescope that has been in operation since July 2018, has been observing the region and the event for some time. Since “TESS” only sends data to the earth every two weeks, which then has to be processed, it was only late to find out which data store the telescope had collected.
Youtube video: "TESS" observes how a black hole tears apart a star
Black hole rips star - astronomers watch almost from the beginning
"The data from TESS allowed us to closely monitor when this destructive event called ASASSN-19bt grew lighter," said Thomas Holoien in a NASA release. Astronomers would never have been able to do this before, Holoien added. Because the telescope network discovered the phenomenon so early, it was able to make observations in different wavelengths in the first few days. "The early dates will be incredibly helpful in understanding the physics behind these outbreaks," says Holoien, under whose leadership a specialist publication has been published in the Astrophysical Journal.
"The first data from TESS enable us to see light very close to the black hole - much closer than we have been able to do so far," explains Patrick Vallely, a co-author of the publication. The data also showed that the increase in brightness was very even, so the scientists rule out that it was another type of outbreak, such as a supernova.
Tidal Star Crack Event: Temperature around the black hole dropped by half
Data showed the researchers that the temperature around the black hole around the eruption dropped by about half for a few days - from 40,000 degrees Celsius to 20,000 degrees. While some theories predicted this drop in temperature, it had never been seen before in a tidal star-ripping event. With the help of various telescopes , the scientists also found that tearing the star released little X-rays , but a lot of UV radiation . It is not yet known why. "More of these early observations could help us answer some of these questions," said S. Bradley Cenko, who is part of the team behind the Swift telescope that provided the UV data.
Researchers believe that the black hole that caused the ASASSN-19bt event has about six million solar masses . It is in the center of a galaxy with the complicated name 2MASX J07001137-6602251, 375 million light years from Earth in the constellation "Flying Fish" (Volans).
Black hole tears a star - a very rare event
Tidal star rupture events are very rare events: According to NASA , they happen about every 10,000 to 100,000 years in a galaxy the size of our Milky Way . In contrast, supernovae - the explosion of stars - happen about every hundred years. So far, astronomers have observed around 40 tidal star rupture events. Scientists had predicted that the "TESS" * space telescope would observe one or two of these rare events in the first two years of its mission.
Black holes and other phenomena in the universe
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By Tanja Banner
* fr.de is part of the nationwide Ippen-Digital central editorial office.
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