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Newswise AMHERST, Mass.Last September, after years of watching, a team of scientists led by Amherst College astronomy professor Daryl Haggard observed and recorded the largest-ever flare in X-rays from a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The astronomical event, which was detected by NASAs Chandra X-ray Observatory, puts the scientific community one step closer to understanding the nature and behavior of supermassive black holes. <\/p>\n
Haggard and her colleagues discussed the flare today at a press conference during this years meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle. <\/p>\n
Supermassive black holes are the largest of black holes, and all large galaxies have one. The one at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, is called Sagittarius A* (or, Sgr A*, as it is called), and scientists estimate that it contains about four and a half million times the mass of our Sun. <\/p>\n
Scientists working with Chandra have observed Sgr A* repeatedly since the telescope was launched into space in 1999. Haggard and fellow astronomers were originally using Chandra to see if Sgr A* would consume parts of a cloud of gas, known as G2. <\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the G2 gas cloud didnt produce the fireworks we were hoping for when it got close to Sgr A*, she said. However, nature often surprises us and we saw something else that was really exciting. <\/p>\n
Haggard and her team detected an X-ray outburst last September that was 400 times brighter than the usual X-ray output from Sgr A*. This megaflare was nearly three times brighter than the previous record holder that was seen in early 2012. A second enormous X-ray flare, 200 times brighter than Sgr A* in its quiet state, was observed with Chandra on October 20, 2014. <\/p>\n
Haggard and her team have two main ideas about what could be causing Sgr A* to erupt in this extreme way. One hypothesis is that the gravity of the supermassive black hole has torn apart a couple of asteroids that wandered too close. The debris from such a tidal disruption would become very hot and produce X-rays before disappearing forever across the black holes point of no return (called the event horizon). <\/p>\n
If an asteroid was torn apart, it would go around the black hole for a couple of hours like water circling an open drain before falling in, said colleague and co-principal investigator Fred Baganoff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA. Thats just how long we saw the brightest X-ray flare last, so that is an intriguing clue for us to consider. <\/p>\n
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Amherst College Astronomy Professor Detects Record-Breaking Black Hole Outburst<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Contact Information Available for logged-in reporters only Newswise AMHERST, Mass.Last September, after years of watching, a team of scientists led by Amherst College astronomy professor Daryl Haggard observed and recorded the largest-ever flare in X-rays from a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The astronomical event, which was detected by NASAs Chandra X-ray Observatory, puts the scientific community one step closer to understanding the nature and behavior of supermassive black holes Continue reading