Student of Pune-based institute creates violent black hole flares
| Date :14-Oct-2019 |
PUNE :
A TEAM of astronomers, led by John Paice who is a student at Pune-based Inter-University Centre for Astronomy & Astrophysics (IUCAA), has created a high frame-rate movie of a growing black hole system at a level of detail never seen before. In the process, the team uncovered new clues to understanding the immediate surroundings of these enigmatic objects including violent flaring at the heart of a black hole system, said a study by University of Southampton published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society journal.
The black hole system studied is named MAXI J1820+070 and was first discovered in early 2018. About 10,000 light years away in our own Milky Way, it has the mass of about seven suns. “The movie was made using real data, but slowed down to 1/10th of actual speed to allow the most rapid flares to be discerned by the human eye,” said Paice, also a graduate student at University of Southampton and the lead author of the study.
“We can see how the material around the black hole is so bright, it's outshining the star that it is consuming, and the fastest flickers last only a few milliseconds – that’s the output of a hundred Suns and more being emitted in the blink of an eye,” he elaborated. The IUCAA is an autonomous institution set up by the University Grants Commission (UGC) and is situated in the campus of University of Pune. It promotes research in astrophysics.