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NASA | X-ray Nova Reveals a New Black Hole in Our Galaxy

  • Uploaded 12 years ago in the category NASA And UFO'S

    On Sept.

    16, NASA's Swift satellite detected a rising tide of high-energy X-rays from a source toward the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

    The outburst, produce

    ...

    On Sept.

    16, NASA's Swift satellite detected a rising tide of high-energy X-rays from a source toward the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

    The outburst, produced by a rare X-ray nova, announced the presence of a previously unknown stellar-mass black hole.

    An X-ray nova is a short-lived X-ray source that appears suddenly, reaches its emission peak in a few days and then fades out over a period of months.

    The outburst arises when a torrent of stored gas suddenly rushes toward one of the most compact objects known, either a neutron star or a black hole.

    Named Swift J1745-26 after the coordinates of its sky position, the nova is located a few degrees from the center of our galaxy toward the constellation Sagittarius.

    While astronomers do not know its precise distance, they think the object resides about 20000 to 30000 light-years away in the galaxy's inner region.

    The pattern of X-rays from the nova signals that the central object is a black hole.

    Ground-based observatories detected infrared and radio emissions, but thick clouds of obscuring dust have prevented astronomers from catching Swift J1745-26 in visible light.

    The black hole must be a member of a low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) system, which includes a normal, sun-like star.

    A stream of gas flows from the normal star and enters into a storage disk around the black hole.

    In most LMXBs, the gas in the disk spirals inward, heats up as it heads toward the black hole, and produces a steady stream of X-rays.

    But under certain ...

  • # nasa# nova
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