Supermassive black hole caught playing with its food

In an intergalactic example of 'catching something cool out of the corner of your eye', astronomers working with the orbiting INTEGRAL observatory have caught, just by luck, a supermassive black hole waking up from a long nap to chow down on part of a huge substellar object.

This black hole, which is at the centre of galaxy NGC 4845 — roughly 50 million light years away from us — has been quiet for the past few decades, but while aiming INTEGRAL (INTErnational Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory) at another galaxy, astronomers witnessed NGC 4845, which was in the same field of view, suddenly flare up brightly. Examining the spectrum of this flare, they figured out that the black hole had torn off part of something that was between 14 and 30 times the size of Jupiter — so either a very large planet or a 'failed star' known as a 'brown dwarf'.

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"This is the first time where we have seen the disruption of a substellar object by a black hole," said Roland Walter, of the Observatory of Geneva, Switzerland, according to a European Space Agency news release. "We estimate that only its external layers were eaten by the black hole, amounting to about 10% of the object's total mass, and that a denser core has been left orbiting the black hole."

They only have the data on the bright flare, but they put together a computer animation to show what this event might have looked like closer up:

Not only did this black hole grab a snack from this object, but it also took its time doing so, playing around with its food before it gobbled it down. The ESA release says that "the way the emission brightened and decayed shows there was a delay of 2–3 months between the object being disrupted and the heating of the debris in the vicinity of the black hole."

The remaining core of the object will continue to orbit the black hole until it is either completely ripped apart and devoured, or the black hole whips it around and slingshots it away at incredible speed. Astronomers will likely be keeping a closer eye on NGC 4845 now, to see what other surprises it might show us.

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Astronomers believe that these kinds of events happen fairly often, possibly "every few years" according to INTEGRAL project scientist Christoph Winkler. We should be able to witness a similar event in our own galaxy in September, as the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy is expected to brighten significantly as it eats up a large gas cloud.

(Image and video courtesy: European Space Agency)

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