Scientists accidentally discover black hole — you can see it with a regular telescope
Created: 06/25/2022, 06:45 am
By: Kai Hartwig
Scientists have discovered a massive black hole.
It can also be spotted by amateur astronomers with a telescope.
Canberra — A team of international researchers has apparently discovered an extremely large black hole.
The discovery was probably due to chance.
Actually, the scientists wanted to look for pairs of double stars lying next to each other in the Milky Way.
They unexpectedly came across the enormous object.
According to initial findings, it is the fastest growing black hole of the past nine billion years.
It is located in the constellation Centaurus.
The research team assumes that the discovered black hole is over 500 times larger than the supermassive one at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way.
The results, which were published on the website of the US university Cornell University, are currently being scientifically reviewed.
Scientists discover black hole — it can already be seen with a hobby telescope
"People have been looking for objects like this since the 1960s," astronomer Christopher Onken of the Australian National University in Canberra told abcnews.
And, according to Onken, you can spot the black hole with a standard telescope with a lens at least 30-40 cm in diameter.
Onken and his team's search initially focused on the binary star systems.
Doctoral student Adrian Lucy, who works at Columbia University in New York (USA), identified around 200 candidates.
Onken noticed something when looking at the supposed binary star systems found by Lucy: "One of them turned out to be something that doesn't look like a binary star system at all".
The system of a black hole.
(Iconic image) © Panthermedia/Imago
He and his team went to South Africa to take a closer look at the mysterious object.
There is a telescope with a 1.9 meter lens in the Astronomical Observatory in Cape Town.
The researchers managed to take a closer look at the different light wavelengths of the object.
Huge Black Hole Discovered — Accretion Disk Enabled Survey
Evidence was accumulating that a supermassive black hole is the cause of the very fast propulsion of the gases.
Viewed from Earth, it looks as if you are dealing with a shining star.
But in reality the light comes from a ring spinning around the black hole.
It consists of gas, dust and stars and is called the accretion disk.
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The disk allowed the putative mass of the black hole to be determined.
Onken and his team estimate this at around 3 billion suns.
The supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way called Sagittarius A*, on the other hand, "only" has around four million suns.
Queensland University of Technology astrophysicist Michael Cowley believes the size of the discovered supermassive black hole points to a very large galaxy associated with it.
"Usually, the more massive the black hole, the more massive the galaxy," Cowley
told abcnews
.
(kh)