NASA Just Spotted a Wandering Black Hole Devouring a Star
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In a galaxy located approximately 750 million light-years from Earth, a rogue supermassive black hole is on track to consume a star. This "orphan" black hole, the second of its kind ever observed by astronomers, resides within the WISEA J014656.04-152214.7 galaxy in the constellation Cetus. The act of devouring the star, known as a tidal disruption event, results in the heated fragments of the disintegrating star, emitting a detectable light signature.
NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, situated in low Earth orbit, detected the phenomenon after preliminary observations from the Palomar Observatory in Southern California and the SOAR (Southern Astrophysical Research) telescope in Chile. The research findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Compared to our own solar system, the star being consumed by the black hole radiates with the intensity of around 10 billion of our suns. The black hole itself is estimated to weigh about 1.2 billion times the mass of our sun. This particular orphan black hole is significantly farther from the galaxy's center, differentiating it from the first confirmed case by about 11 to 12 times.
Research fellow Robert Stein from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center suggests that these wandering black holes may be dislodged during the collision of larger galaxies with smaller ones, leaving the lighter black hole untethered. Alternatively, the galaxy may still be in the midst of a merger. Stein explained that these tidal disruption events serve as a means to discover otherwise hidden supermassive black holes that stray away from their usual galactic cores.
With this discovery, one of a few confirmed to date, Stein asserts that this new detection technique can be further utilized to identify more such black holes.
Tidal disruption events involving black holes in their normal positions are relatively uncommon, occurring once every 100,000 years or so. When a star ventures too close to a black hole, it gets inexorably pulled in, illuminating the black hole's existence and providing astronomers with an opportunity to study galaxy evolutions and positions.
The Swift Observatory is scheduled for an orbit boost in the coming months, which will enable it to continue the search for more wandering black holes, complemented by new telescopes and instruments coming online.
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