At the heart of a galaxy more than 570 million light-years away, energy is so consistently flaring into space that astrophysicists have called the galaxy Old Faithful, like the famous predictable geyser in Yellowstone National Park. This is the first time such regular and frequent torches have been seen emanating from the core of a distant galaxy.
About once every 114 days, torches emerge from the center of the galaxy ESO 253-3 (the events actually took place nearly 600 million years ago, but scientists are now seeing it for the first time because of the distance of the galaxy must move to reach Earth).
Researchers recently counted 17 of these eruptions that lasted about six years. Flares were observed by instruments on the ground and in space, including NASA space telescopes such as the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, NASA representatives. said in a statement.
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The culprit behind the torches is probably the supermassive black hole of the galaxy, a cosmic giant about 20 times the size of the black hole known as Sagittarius A * (Sgr A *) in the center of the Milky Way galaxy. To put this in perspective, Sgr A * measures approximately 23.6 million kilometers in diameter and is approximately 4 million times the mass of the sun.
While ESO 253-3’s enormous black hole snacks on a nearby star, gases flowing from the star collide with the black hole’s waste disk to produce brilliant torches, according to research conducted on January 12 during the 237th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, virtually this year. The researchers also described their discovery in a study that has not yet been reviewed by peers, which was published online in the pre-emptive database on September 7, 2020. arXiv.
On November 14, 2014, the first of these torches was detected – and considered a supernova – by researchers from the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASSAS-SN), a project run by the Ohio State Department of Astronomy. University. which contains a network of 24 telescopes worldwide, according to the ASSAS-SN project website.
In 2020, however, scientists analyzed the last six years of ASSAS-SN data and identified more flames emerging from the galaxy at regular intervals, about 114 days apart. Based on these observations, scientists have successfully predicted when subsequent eruptions would be seen in 2020: on May 17, September 6 and December 26. They confirmed these events with observations in various wavelengths from the ground and into space.
The scientists also compared ASSAS-SN’s data on flares from the past with TESS’s aerial surveys, which provided more information than ASSAS-SN did on specific flare activity. TESS, for example, captured a ‘very thorough image’ of a torch from November 8, 2018, picking up images as it becomes brighter and fainter for about five days, “but because of the way the mission presents the sky, not everyone can observe it. of them, “studies co-author Patrick Vallely, a research fellow at the National Science Foundation at Ohio State University, said in a statement.
“ASAS-SN collects less detail about individual outbreaks, but provides a longer baseline, which was crucial in this case,” Vallely said. “The two recordings complement each other.”
The most likely explanation for the recurring flares is a phenomenon known as a tidal disorder, in which the orbit of a star carries it so close to a black hole that pieces of the star are snatched away and sucked into the growth disk – ‘ a diffuse band of dust, gas and debris revolving around the black hole. Usually such events end with the destruction of the star. In the case of ESO 253-3, the orbit of a massive star could possibly bring it near the black hole so that the star could lose some of its matter, which could cause a flare. But then the star zips away and escapes. The cycle repeats each time the star moves close enough to the black hole to feel its relentless pull, the researchers in the study explained.
The regular and predictable emissions of ESO 253-3 were a rare window for behavior in black holes and could, according to the study, help scientists better understand how these mysterious cosmic objects grow and change.
“It’s really exciting because we’ve seen black holes do a lot of things, but we’ve never seen them do anything like that – which causes this frequent outburst of light – Vallely said in the statement. ‘ an extra galactic Old Faithful. ‘
Originally published on Live Science.