A giant black hole wakes up

Although we know that the supermassive black holes (millions of times the mass of our sun) hide at the center of most galaxies, their even nature makes them difficult to spot and study. Contrary to the popular idea of ​​black holes “constantly embedding matter, these gravitational monsters can spend long periods in a dormant and inactive phase.

This was true for the black hole in the heart of SDSS1335 + 0728, a remote and banal galaxy with 300 million light years in the constellation of the Virgin. After being inactive for decades, he suddenly lit up and recently began to produce unprecedented lightning of X -ray light.

The first signs of activity appeared at the end of 2019, when the galaxy started in an unexpectedly shiny way, attracting the attention of astronomers. After studying it for several years, they concluded that the unusual changes they have seen were probably the result of the black hole “lighting” – the integration of an active phase. The brilliant and compact central region of the galaxy is now classified as an active galactic nucleus, nicknamed “Ansky”.

“When we saw Ansky lighting up in optical images, we have triggered follow -up observations using the NASA X Swift spatial telescope, and we checked the archived data of the Eroposa X -ray telescope, but at the time when we saw no evidence of x -ray” activation.

Ansky wakes up

Then, in February 2024, a team led by Lorena Hernández-García, researcher at the University of Valparaiso, Chile, began to see Ansky radiographs at almost regular intervals.

The work was published in Natural astronomy.

“This rare event offers astronomers the opportunity to observe the behavior of a black hole in real time, using space telescopes with XMM-Newton and NASA, Chandra and Swift. This phenomenon is an almost almost rash rash, or Qpe. Lorena.

“The first QPE episode was discovered in 2019, and since then we have detected more than more. We do not yet understand what causes them. Studying Ansky will help us to better understand black holes and how they evolve.”

“Xmm-Newton played a pivotal role in our study. It is the only X-ray rays telescope to detect the lower radiographic light between the gusts. With Xmm-Newton, we could measure the weakness of the Ancsky, which allowed us to calculate the amount of energy Ansky releases when it lights up and begins to blink.”

Destroy confusing behavior

The severity of a black hole captures the material that is too close and can tear it. The question of a captured star, for example, would be spread over a hot, shiny and fast disc called the accretion disk. Current thought is that QPEs are caused by an object (which could be a star or a small black hole) interacting with this accretion disc and they were linked to the destruction of a star. But there is no evidence thatnsky destroyed a star.

The extraordinary characteristics of the recurring gusts of Ansky prompted the research team to consider other possibilities. The accretion disc could be formed by gas captured by the black hole in its neighborhood, not by a disintegrated star. In this scenario, the eruptions of X -ray would come from very energetic shock on the disc, caused by a small celestial object traveling and disturbing the orbit material, on several occasions.

“Ansky’s radiographs of radiographs are 10 times longer and 10 times brighter than what we see of a typical QPE,” explains Johen Chakraborty, member of the team and doctorate. Student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States

“Each of these eruptions releases a hundred times more energy than we have seen elsewhere. Ansky eruptions also show the longest cadence ever observed, about 4.5 days.

Look at a black hole in action

Being able to look at Ansky evolving in real time is an unprecedented opportunity for astronomers to learn more about the black holes and the energy events they feed.

“For Qpes, we are always to the point where we have more models than data, and we need more observations to understand what is going on,” said ESA researcher and X -ray astronomer, Erwan Quintin.

“We thought that the QPEs were the result of small celestial objects captured by much larger eruptions and tearing.

“It is crucial to have these X -ray observations which will complement the gravitational waves and help us solve the confusing behavior of massive black holes.”