JAXA, NASA Detect Supermassive Black Hole Destroying Star In Different Galaxy

AsianScientist (Aug. 27, 2011) – Two international groups of astronomers, including members from Japan, the US, Germany, Taiwan, and South Korea, have published separate letters in Nature this Wednesday on their breaking discovery of a black hole swallowing a star in a galaxy 3.9 billion light years away.

The discovery was made using the Japanese instrument, Monitor All Sky X Ray Image (Maxi), mounted on the Japanese experimental module, Kibo, at the International Space Station (ISS) in coordination with a NASA satellite, called Swift.

The Swift team, led by lead author Prof. David Burrows of Penn State University, had detected a strong gamma ray burst (GRB) coming from an object located in the Draco constellation on March 28, 2011. The object was named Swift J164449.3+573451.

Alerted by the Swift team, the Maxi group in Japan reviewed the Maxi data of this object and found that it had detected X-rays from Swift J164449.3+573451 several hours prior to Swift’s discovery. The Japanese team also concluded that there had been no previous X-ray emissions before the activity.

A detailed analysis of Maxi and Swift observations revealed that the increase in brightness in the X-ray band by more than 10,000-fold since 1990, and by more than 100-fold since early 2010, came from a supermassive black hole located in the center of a galaxy destroying a star that came too close.

According to JAXA, this was the first time that a nucleus with no X-ray emission had ever suddenly started such activity. The strong X-ray and rapid variation indicated that the X-ray came from a jet.

Although there have been some other observations to date, namely considered to be tidal disruption and a black hole swallowing a star, they were not as violent as seen this time, and the beginning had not previously been observed.

A companion paper by Zauderer B.A. et al. also comes to similar conclusions on the basis of radio observations. They estimate the mass of the black hole at around 10⁶ solar masses.

The two letters can be found at:

Burrows DN et al. (2011) Relativistic jet activity from the tidal disruption of a star by a massive black hole.

Zauderer BA et al. (2011) Birth of a relativistic outflow in the unusual γ-ray transient Swift J164449.3+573451.

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Source: Nature Publishing Group; JAXA.
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