Despite the name, black holes often shine very bright in the sky. That’s due to a hot, glowing ring of dust and gas that surrounds them, called the corona. Now, astronomers have been puzzled to witness a black hole’s corona suddenly vanish – and as if that wasn’t weird enough, it reappeared a few months later.

Left: a regular corona, shining bright around a black hole. Right: A faded corona, such as the one seen for the first time in the new study

This black hole is a supermassive monster, located at the center of a galaxy some 100 million light-years away. And it’s particularly ravenous, belonging to a class called Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) which appear to glow brightly as they constantly chow down on material swirling into them.

While observing the AGN in X-ray, optical and ultraviolet light, scientists watched in surprise as the light faded, its brightness dropping by a factor of 10,000 until it was no longer detectable at all. Scientists have never seen a burnout that drastic happen so quickly.

But that wasn’t the end. Within a few months the light had been rekindled, firing back up almost to its original luminosity, which has also never been seen before.

One hypothesis that the team put forward was that a star wandered too close, only to be torn apart by the black hole. The initial flare could have been caused by the star’s destruction, and the intense gravity of the event could have dislodged material from the corona to fall into the black hole. Then over time, more of it built up and eventually fed the AGN, allowing it to brighten once again.

https://newatlas.com/space/black-hole-corona-vanish/

PermeateFree said:

Despite the name, black holes often shine very bright in the sky. That’s due to a hot, glowing ring of dust and gas that surrounds them, called the corona. Now, astronomers have been puzzled to witness a black hole’s corona suddenly vanish – and as if that wasn’t weird enough, it reappeared a few months later.

Left: a regular corona, shining bright around a black hole. Right: A faded corona, such as the one seen for the first time in the new study

This black hole is a supermassive monster, located at the center of a galaxy some 100 million light-years away. And it’s particularly ravenous, belonging to a class called Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) which appear to glow brightly as they constantly chow down on material swirling into them.

While observing the AGN in X-ray, optical and ultraviolet light, scientists watched in surprise as the light faded, its brightness dropping by a factor of 10,000 until it was no longer detectable at all. Scientists have never seen a burnout that drastic happen so quickly.

But that wasn’t the end. Within a few months the light had been rekindled, firing back up almost to its original luminosity, which has also never been seen before.

One hypothesis that the team put forward was that a star wandered too close, only to be torn apart by the black hole. The initial flare could have been caused by the star’s destruction, and the intense gravity of the event could have dislodged material from the corona to fall into the black hole. Then over time, more of it built up and eventually fed the AGN, allowing it to brighten once again.

https://newatlas.com/space/black-hole-corona-vanish/

I reckon that’s what happened.

Peak Warming Man said:

PermeateFree said:

Despite the name, black holes often shine very bright in the sky. That’s due to a hot, glowing ring of dust and gas that surrounds them, called the corona. Now, astronomers have been puzzled to witness a black hole’s corona suddenly vanish – and as if that wasn’t weird enough, it reappeared a few months later.

Left: a regular corona, shining bright around a black hole. Right: A faded corona, such as the one seen for the first time in the new study

This black hole is a supermassive monster, located at the center of a galaxy some 100 million light-years away. And it’s particularly ravenous, belonging to a class called Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) which appear to glow brightly as they constantly chow down on material swirling into them.

While observing the AGN in X-ray, optical and ultraviolet light, scientists watched in surprise as the light faded, its brightness dropping by a factor of 10,000 until it was no longer detectable at all. Scientists have never seen a burnout that drastic happen so quickly.

But that wasn’t the end. Within a few months the light had been rekindled, firing back up almost to its original luminosity, which has also never been seen before.

One hypothesis that the team put forward was that a star wandered too close, only to be torn apart by the black hole. The initial flare could have been caused by the star’s destruction, and the intense gravity of the event could have dislodged material from the corona to fall into the black hole. Then over time, more of it built up and eventually fed the AGN, allowing it to brighten once again.

https://newatlas.com/space/black-hole-corona-vanish/

I reckon that’s what happened.

That’s good, no-one else needs to come up with another hypothesis now.

buffy said:

Peak Warming Man said:

PermeateFree said:

Despite the name, black holes often shine very bright in the sky. That’s due to a hot, glowing ring of dust and gas that surrounds them, called the corona. Now, astronomers have been puzzled to witness a black hole’s corona suddenly vanish – and as if that wasn’t weird enough, it reappeared a few months later.

Left: a regular corona, shining bright around a black hole. Right: A faded corona, such as the one seen for the first time in the new study

This black hole is a supermassive monster, located at the center of a galaxy some 100 million light-years away. And it’s particularly ravenous, belonging to a class called Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) which appear to glow brightly as they constantly chow down on material swirling into them.

While observing the AGN in X-ray, optical and ultraviolet light, scientists watched in surprise as the light faded, its brightness dropping by a factor of 10,000 until it was no longer detectable at all. Scientists have never seen a burnout that drastic happen so quickly.

But that wasn’t the end. Within a few months the light had been rekindled, firing back up almost to its original luminosity, which has also never been seen before.

One hypothesis that the team put forward was that a star wandered too close, only to be torn apart by the black hole. The initial flare could have been caused by the star’s destruction, and the intense gravity of the event could have dislodged material from the corona to fall into the black hole. Then over time, more of it built up and eventually fed the AGN, allowing it to brighten once again.

https://newatlas.com/space/black-hole-corona-vanish/

I reckon that’s what happened.

That’s good, no-one else needs to come up with another hypothesis now.

I can come up with another hypothesis, though. Remember that gas cloud that is in an elongated elliptical orbit around out Milky Way’s AGN. Name of G2 or something like that. If missed, but if it had passed closer then thr Milky Way’s black hole would have lit up and then faded, just like this one.

https://www.space.com/24362-milky-way-black-hole-gas-cloud.html