Black Hole discovered 1,000 light years away -- closest known to earth

[essentialsaltes]

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A black hole has been discovered 1,000 light-years from Earth, making it the closest black hole to our solar system ever found.

Although the black hole itself is invisible, it has two bright companion stars that gave away the hiding spot of the black hole. The two stars can be seen with the naked eye on dark, clear nights in the southern hemisphere. (A black hole is a place in space that even light can't get out because gravity pulls so much.)

When astronomers observed the star system, in the Telescopium constellation, they noticed that one of the stars was completing an orbit around a hidden object every 40 Earth days. The second star is further out from the first star and the black hole.

This revealed that what they were actually seeing was a triple system that included a black hole, not just a double star system. The observation was made using the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile.

A study published Wednesday in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics describes the triple system.

[From the motion of the visible star, the mass of the other object in the system is estimated at 4.2 solar masses.]

"An invisible object with a mass at least 4 times that of the Sun can only be a black hole," said Thomas Rivinius, lead study author and European Southern Observatory scientist, in a statement.

But this new detection of a silent black hole could be the first of many to come in the future, the researchers said. They believe that over the course of our galaxy's lifetime, a multitude of stars have collapsed and created black holes. Now, astronomers just have to find them.

 

[Strathos]

Let's send the flat earthers to explore it.

 

[nonaeroterraqueous]

How many snide comments does it take to fill a black hole?

 

[Sabertooth]

How many snide comments does it take to fill a black hole?

(It's what's in "snide" that counts.)

 

[sjastro]

LINK

A black hole has been discovered 1,000 light-years from Earth, making it the closest black hole to our solar system ever found.

Although the black hole itself is invisible, it has two bright companion stars that gave away the hiding spot of the black hole. The two stars can be seen with the naked eye on dark, clear nights in the southern hemisphere. (A black hole is a place in space that even light can't get out because gravity pulls so much.)

When astronomers observed the star system, in the Telescopium constellation, they noticed that one of the stars was completing an orbit around a hidden object every 40 Earth days. The second star is further out from the first star and the black hole.

This revealed that what they were actually seeing was a triple system that included a black hole, not just a double star system. The observation was made using the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile.

A study published Wednesday in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics describes the triple system.

[From the motion of the visible star, the mass of the other object in the system is estimated at 4.2 solar masses.]

"An invisible object with a mass at least 4 times that of the Sun can only be a black hole," said Thomas Rivinius, lead study author and European Southern Observatory scientist, in a statement.

But this new detection of a silent black hole could be the first of many to come in the future, the researchers said. They believe that over the course of our galaxy's lifetime, a multitude of stars have collapsed and created black holes. Now, astronomers just have to find them.

Very interesting.
Given the black hole is a non accretion type it gives us no information about the event horizon.
Indirect evidence of event horizons comes in the form of X-ray binaries such as Cygnus X-1 where the orbital period is 5.6 days and the star is close enough for its outer gas layer to be stripped and captured by the black hole.

Evidence of just such an event horizon may have been detected in 1992 using ultraviolet (UV) observations with the High Speed Photometer on the Hubble Space Telescope. As self-luminous clumps of matter spiral into a black hole, their radiation will be emitted in a series of pulses that are subject to gravitational redshift as the material approaches the horizon. That is, the wavelengths of the radiation will steadily increase, as predicted by general relativity. Matter hitting a solid, compact object would emit a final burst of energy, whereas material passing through an event horizon would not. Two such "dying pulse trains" were observed, which is consistent with the existence of a black hole.

 

[Ophiolite]

I can't see the attraction in black holes.