{"id":24860,"date":"2025-07-26T10:15:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T10:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/24860\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T10:15:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T10:15:07","slug":"scientists-spot-an-exceptionally-rare-intermediate-black-hole-eating-a-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/24860\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Spot an Exceptionally Rare ‘Intermediate’ Black Hole Eating a Star"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A\u2018A Hubble Space Telescope image of a pair of galaxies: NGC 6099 (lower left) and NGC 6098 (upper right). The purple blob depicts X-ray emission from a compact star cluster. The X-rays are produced by an intermediate-mass black hole tearing apart a star.\u2019 | Credit: Science: NASA, ESA, CXC, Yi-Chi Chang (National Tsing Hua University); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI) <\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s Hubble Space Telescope<\/a> and Chandra X-Ray Observatory<\/a> may be relatively old space observatories, but that doesn\u2019t stop them from making groundbreaking cosmological discoveries. The two telescopes just spotted<\/a> an extremely rare type of black hole currently eating a star in space. <\/p>\n

Hubble and Chandra \u201cteamed up\u201d to observe NGC 6099 HLX-1, a \u201cbright\u201d X-ray source that appears to emanate from a compact star cluster in NGC 6099, a vast elliptical galaxy located about 450 million light-years from Earth. <\/p>\n

The Hubble Space Telescope has played a crucial role in the study of supermassive black holes. Shortly after the telescope launched into space in 1990, it \u201cdiscovered that throughout the Universe can contain supermassive black holes at their centers weighing millions or billions of times the mass of our Sun,\u201d NASA explains. However, Hubble also found that galaxies can have millions of much smaller black holes that weigh less than 100 times the mass of the Sun. These relatively tiny black holes are born when especially massive stars die. <\/p>\n

\"Two\u2018A Hubble Space Telescope image of a pair of galaxies: NGC 6099 (lower left) and NGC 6098 (upper right). The white dot labeled HLX-1 is the visible-light component of the location of a compact star cluster where an intermediate-mass black hole is tearing apart a star.\u2019 | Credit: Science: NASA, ESA, Yi-Chi Chang (National Tsing Hua University); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI) <\/p>\n

However, while supermassive black holes can be found throughout the cosmos, and scientists can observe small black holes, there is a third class of black holes that has proven much more elusive: intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs). <\/p>\n

In true Goldilocks fashion \u2014 not too big and not too small \u2014 these IMBHs are often invisible to astronomers because they do not \u201cgobble as much gas and stars\u201d as supermassive black holes, which creates powerful, detectable radiation. <\/p>\n

\"Image\u2018This compass image of Hubble and Chandra data shows two elliptical galaxies, NGC 6098 at upper right and NGC 6099 at lower left. The fuzzy purple blob at bottom center depicts X-ray emission from a compact star cluster. The X-rays are produced by an intermediate-mass black hole tearing apart a star. Wavelength information at the top left corner shows the components of the image. A scale bar appears at the bottom left corner and compass directional arrows at bottom right orient the viewer.\u2019 | Credit: Science: NASA, ESA, CXC, Yi-Chi Chang (National Tsing Hua University); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI) <\/p>\n

Instead, much like other transient cosmic events, IMBHs can only be observed when they happen to be detected while they are actively consuming a star. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen [IMBHs] occasionally devour a hapless bypassing star \u2014 in what astronomers call a tidal disruption event \u2014 they pour out a gusher of radiation,\u201d NASA writes. <\/p>\n

The latest \u201cprobable\u201d IMBH, NGC 6099 HLX-1, was \u201ccaught snacking\u201d in telescope data about 40,000 light-years from NGC 6099\u2019s galactic center. In the associated research<\/a>, newly published in The Astrophysical Journal, scientists Yi-Chi Chang, Roberto Soria, Albert K.H. Kong, Alister W. Graham, Kirill A. Grishin, and Igor V. Chilingarian explain how they initially discovered unusual X-rays in Chandra observations from 2009. The team then followed up using the European Space Agency\u2019s (ESA) XMM-Newton space observatory. <\/p>\n

\u201cX-ray sources with such extreme luminosity are rare outside galaxy nuclei and can serve as a key probe for identifying elusive IMBHs. They represent a crucial missing link in black hole evolution between stellar mass and supermassive black holes,\u201d says the lead author of the research, Yi-Chi Chang of the National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan.<\/p>\n

The X-ray emissions from NGC 6099 HLX-1 were three million degrees, which is consistent with expected observations of a tidal disruption event. Hubble data revealed evidence that a small cluster of stars was located around the suspected IMBH, which would provide ample sustenance for the medium-sized black hole. The stars are incredibly close together, separated by only a few light-months, or about 500 billion miles. <\/p>\n

The suspected IMBH hit its maximum observed brightness in 2012 and declined in intensity until 2023. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf the IMBH is eating a star, how long does it take to swallow the star\u2019s gas? In 2009, HLX-1 was fairly bright. Then in 2012, it was about 100 times brighter. And then it went down again,\u201d explains study co-author Roberto Soria of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF). \u201cSo now we need to wait and see if it\u2019s flaring multiple times, or there was a beginning, there was peak, and now it\u2019s just going to go down all the way until it disappears.\u201d <\/p>\n

NGC 6099 HLX-1 remains a fascinating area of study because scientists believe intermediate-mass black holes may continue growing and someday become supermassive black holes through coalescence with other IMBHs that may be orbiting a galaxy\u2019s center, like satellite black holes. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

An alternative theory is that supermassive black holes in galaxies formed from dark-matter halos in the early Universe, rather than being born from multiple black holes combining or through ongoing mass accumulation. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo if we are lucky, we\u2019re going to find more free-floating black holes suddenly becoming X-ray bright because of a tidal disruption event. If we can do a statistical study, this will tell us how many of these IMBHs there are, how often they disrupt a star, how bigger galaxies have grown by assembling smaller galaxies.\u201d Soria adds. <\/p>\n

However, the studies are complicated by the fact that space telescopes, especially ones like Chandra and XMM-Newton that only look at a very small portion of the sky at a time, very rarely discover tidal disruption events. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, newly opened in Chile<\/a>, looks at a huge portion of the sky each night and could help locate tidal disruption events for further study, albeit in optical light. <\/p>\n

Image credits: Science: NASA, ESA, CXC, Yi-Chi Chang (National Tsing Hua University); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018A Hubble Space Telescope image of a pair of galaxies: NGC 6099 (lower left) and NGC 6098 (upper…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[1813,15703,15704,15705,15706,15707,15708,92,2302,90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-24860","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-astronomy","9":"tag-blackhole","10":"tag-chandra","11":"tag-chandraxrayobservatory","12":"tag-galaxy","13":"tag-hubble","14":"tag-hubblespacetelescope","15":"tag-nasa","16":"tag-physics","17":"tag-science","18":"tag-space","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom","21":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}