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Astronomers Discover Closest Black Hole To Earth

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This artist’s impression shows the orbits of the objects in the HR 6819 triple system. This system is made up of an inner binary with one star (orbit in blue) and a newly discovered black hole (orbit in red), as well as a third star in a wider orbit (also in blue). The black hole lies just 1,000 light-years from Earth and has a mass at least 4 times that of the sun. ESO/L. Calçada

Astronomers have discovered the nearest black hole to Earth and also the first to orbit a star visible with the naked eye.

The star, named HR 6819, is located in the constellation of Telescopium and visible from the southern U.S. and points south. At magnitude 5.4 skywatchers can spot it from a dark, rural sky with the naked eye (but I’d bring along binoculars just in case.) The team originally observed the star as part of a double star study but when they analyzed their observations they discovered a third body in orbit with the pair. Observations with the 2.2-meter MPR/ESO telescope in Chile showed that the inner of the two visible stars orbits an unseen object every 40 days.

HD 6819 in Telescopium the telescope is located low in the southern sky (below the Teapot) before the start of morning twilight from the southern U.S. Stellarium

Most of the time we heard about supermassive black holes, the kind that lurk in the cores of many galaxies including our own Milky Way. That black hole has a mass of 4 million suns! The hidden black hole in HR 6819 is a stellar-mass black hole — an object formed from the collapse of a single very massive star. It’s also one of the few known that do not interact violently with their environment and, therefore, appear truly black. Black holes can draw in nearby gases or even steal material from a closely orbiting companion star. As the gas swirls down into the hole it’s heated to extreme temperatures and radiates powerful X-rays. Astronomers have spotted only a couple dozen black holes in the Milky Way to date and even fewer “silent types” like this one.

“There must be hundreds of millions of black holes out there, but we know about only very few. Knowing what to look for should put us in a better position to find them,” says ESO scientist Thomas Rivinius, who led the study.

Material from the supergiant star HDE 226868 (left), which closely orbits a black hole (right), is pulled into a disk by the powerful gravity of a black hole 8.7 times the mass of the sun. As the star’s gases swirl into the hole it’s heated and radiates light. In contrast, the black hole in the HR 6819 system is invisible because there’s no nearby material for it to interact with. Only its gravity is felt.  NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

HD 6819’s black hole is invisible, but makes its presence known by its gravitational pull, which forces the luminous inner star to orbit what appears to be absolutely nothing. By studying the orbit of the star in the inner pair the team determined that the hole possesses at least 4 times the mass of our sun. Most black holes form when a star with a mass about 8 times that of the sun runs out of fuel to burn (via nuclear fusion) in its core. With nothing to hold back gravity’s incessant pull the star collapses in on itself and then explodes as a supernova that leaves behind a black hole.

Black holes are black because their matter is so tightly compressed into such a tiny space that the gravity it exerts is enough to prevent light itself from leaving the star. No light means nothing to see. Astronomers typically infer a black hole’s presence by how its gravity affects things near it, in this case the HD 6819 double star system.

When it comes to observing the sky there are lots of things we can’t directly see such as the 4,264 known extrasolar planets, but I like knowing they’re there just the same. It adds another dimension to viewing the myriad points of light that dot the night sky.


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