Tuesday, May 2 2023 – 19:02 WIB
LIVE Techno – Astronomers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have detected a rare extraterrestrial phenomenon that occurs when a supermassive black hole eats up a star.
The event occurred in the galaxy NGC 7392 which is about 137 million light years away. So-called tidal disruption events (TDEs), about a hundred of which have been observed by astronomers to date.
They saw it as a burst of light emitted when a black hole emits large amounts of radiation as it feeds on stellar matter.
According to an MIT press release, the TDE seen in galaxy NGC 7392, known as WTP14adbjsh, is the closest event found so far.
While TDE usually stands out in the optical and X-ray spectra, due to the nature of the radiation emitted in the process, WTP14adbjsh is instead visible in the infrared because the light produced by the dying star is absorbed by the hot-releasing space dust, which astronomers detected.
The press release also indicates that WTP14adbjsh occurs in an active star-forming galaxy, with few TDEs observed so far.
2023-05-02 12:02:00
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