Winston
Lorenzo von Matterhorn
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Collapsing Star Gives Birth to a Black Hole
May 25, 2017
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/collapsing-star-gives-birth-to-a-black-hole
Astronomers have watched as a massive, dying star was likely reborn as a black hole. It took the combined power of the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), and NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes to go looking for remnants of the vanquished star, only to find that it disappeared out of sight.
It went out with a whimper instead of a bang.
The doomed star, named N6946-BH1, was 25 times as massive as our sun. It began to brighten weakly in 2009. But, by 2015, it appeared to have winked out of existence. By a careful process of elimination, based on observations researchers eventually concluded that the star must have become a black hole. This may be the fate for extremely massive stars in the universe.
The star should have exploded in a very bright supernova. Instead, it fizzled outand then left behind a black hole.
It doesn't necessarily make sense, said Stanek, professor of astronomy at Ohio State, that a massive star could undergo a supernova a process which entails blowing off much of its outer layers and still have enough mass left over to form a massive black hole on the scale of those that LIGO detected.
"I suspect it's much easier to make a very massive black hole if there is no supernova," he concluded.
May 25, 2017
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/collapsing-star-gives-birth-to-a-black-hole
Astronomers have watched as a massive, dying star was likely reborn as a black hole. It took the combined power of the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), and NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes to go looking for remnants of the vanquished star, only to find that it disappeared out of sight.
It went out with a whimper instead of a bang.
The doomed star, named N6946-BH1, was 25 times as massive as our sun. It began to brighten weakly in 2009. But, by 2015, it appeared to have winked out of existence. By a careful process of elimination, based on observations researchers eventually concluded that the star must have become a black hole. This may be the fate for extremely massive stars in the universe.
The star should have exploded in a very bright supernova. Instead, it fizzled outand then left behind a black hole.
It doesn't necessarily make sense, said Stanek, professor of astronomy at Ohio State, that a massive star could undergo a supernova a process which entails blowing off much of its outer layers and still have enough mass left over to form a massive black hole on the scale of those that LIGO detected.
"I suspect it's much easier to make a very massive black hole if there is no supernova," he concluded.
