A sudden flash of energy from the center of a distant galaxy was visible to the naked eye. A survey of the entire night sky conducted from the Palomar Observatory in California was the first to detect the flash.
We found a source that was puzzling on February 14th. It wasn't normal. The lead author of a paper about the event is from the University of Maryland. Weird is great in science. You can learn from it.
Astronomers around the world used telescopes to look at the flash in X-ray, radio, and other wavelength. A type of bright flash usually detected by X-ray telescopes was present. This one was spotted by a telescope.
Astronomers concluded that the flash was caused by a star being torn apart. A star was shredded by the forces of nature after wandering too close to the black hole. The star can be torn apart by it. It is pulled and stretched until it can no longer hold up. Astronomers have seen dozens of these events over the last few years.
In science, weird is good. You can learn from it.
It was unusual that material was thrown out from the black hole's poles at close to the speed of light. Sometimes a powerful jet of material is launched when the star is disrupted. The jet is thought to have been particularly bright because it is pointed directly at Earth, making it appear brighter and more visible.
Astronomers need telescopes that are constantly scanning as much of the sky as possible and which can flag any sudden changes in brightness, like the Zwicky Transient Facility. This mountain of data needs to be refined to find the most interesting objects because there are thousands of changes in brightness. There are very fast events in the optical wavelength.
There are possibilities of a supernova or two neutron stars merging. There are more observations that need to be made to understand what triggered the flash. A supernova is very fast by the standards of astronomy. Within a few hours or days, this event became even brighter. It was immediately and pressingly interested.
The group flagged this flash to the international community and encouraged researchers to use telescopes in other wavelengths to see it. There were 21 telescopes that provided data on the event. The picture emerged when all the pieces were put together. We were not expecting to find such a rare source.
Only a small percentage of the stars that are torn apart by black holes produce powerful jets. The star's material is pulled towards the black hole and the energy of the matter is converted into light. It is thought that the magnetic fields and spin of the black hole could cause material to shoot out from its poles.
We are talking about thousands of times the mass of the Earth that is pulled apart and flung into the sky. There is a chance to study something that is impossible to reproduce on Earth.
It was the first time that such a jet had been seen in the visible light part of the spectrum. The detection of jets from around black holes was done by looking at X-rays and radio waves.
The environment around the black hole allows optical light to pass through, and this shows that looking in the optical range could be a good way to spot extreme events in the future.
We are talking about thousands of times the mass of the Earth that is pulled apart and flung into the sky.
Increased flexibility in telescope design and planning is being created by the need for telescopes to respond quickly. Many more researchers apply for time on the telescope than it's possible to accommodate due to the oversubscribed telescopes. Every last minute of observation time is filled as much as possible because the time is carefully planned out. There is a need for telescopes that can respond quickly to rare events.
It is difficult to change the direction of a space-based telescope quickly, so Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope only occasionally contribute to this type of research. The MASTER network or the GROWTH- India telescope are ground-based telescopes that specialize in scanning the sky for gamma-ray events.
There is always the option of a human intervention. You have to call people up and ask them to point the telescope at the coordinates. The man said, "Areoni said." Researchers use online systems to make observations. Telescopes can respond to rare but important events.
The breakthrough in black hole observations was made possible by the international cooperation between researchers working with different telescopes and the ability of those telescopes to respond quickly. This was crucial for the discovery. We wouldn't have realized that we were sitting on a big discovery if we couldn't use a telescope.
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