Our Galaxy's Supermassive Black Hole Has Emitted a Mysteriously Bright Flare

Science Alert ^ | 12 AUG 2019 | MICHELLE STARR

[BenLurkin]

The supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*, is relatively quiet. It's not an active nucleus, spewing light and heat into the space around it; most of the time, the black hole's activity is low key, with minimal fluctuations in its brightness.

When we view that radiation with a telescope using the infrared range, it translates as brightness. Normally, the brightness of Sgr A* flickers a bit like a candle, varying from minutes to hours. But when the surroundings of a black hole flare that brightly, it's a sign something may have gotten close enough to be grabbed by its gravity.

The team is busily gathering data to try and narrow it down, but there are two immediate possibilities. One is G2, an object thought to be a gas cloud that approached within 36 light-hours of Sgr A* in 2014. If it was a gas cloud, this proximity should have torn it to shreds, and parts of it devoured by the black hole - yet nothing happened.

"One of the possibilities," Do told ScienceAlert, "is that the star S0-2, when it passed close to the black hole last year, changed the way gas flows into the black hole, and so more gas is falling on it, leading it to become more variable."

More observations will take place over the coming weeks with the ground-based Keck Observatory before the galactic centre is no longer visible at night from Earth.

But many other telescopes - including Spitzer, Chandra, Swift and ALMA - were observing the galactic centre over the last few months, too. Their data could reveal different aspects of the physics of the change in brightness, and help us understand what Sgr A* is up to.

[trebb]

It burped...