ANU researchers discover fastest-growing black hole ever recordred
Quote:
Originally Posted by Charlotte Gore, ABC, 20 Feb 2024
Australian National University researchers have discovered the fastest-growing black hole ever recorded, with a mass roughly 17 billion times that of our solar system's Sun.
The supermassive black hole exists within quasar J0529-435, which researchers discovered is also the most luminous known thing being continually powered in the universe.
Researchers hypothesise the black hole is growing to near the proposed upper limit of mass for a star or an accretion disk, but further research and observations of its growth rate are needed to confirm that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Charlotte Gore, ABC, 20 Feb 2024
Lead author and ANU Associate Professor, Christian Wolf, said the black hole is indeed creating matter from its environment, and consuming a lot to do so.
"This black hole eats as much mass in a single day as there is in our entire solar system – the Sun and all the planets combined," he said.
"The accretion disk [the holding pattern for all the material waiting to be devoured] is so massive and dense and hot that it starts glowing brightly, and that's the light that we see.
"It's a lot of light that comes out of that accretion disk, about 500 trillion times the amount of light that our Sun emits, or about 20,000 times the amount of light that our entire Milky Way galaxy – with all its billions of stars – emits."
Professor Wolf said the quasar's accretion disk was incredibly big, being seven light years in diameter — 1.5 times the distance from our solar system to the next star in the sky, Alpha Centauri.
The discovery paper cites :-
J0529-4351 as Gaia DR3 SOURCE_ID 4805630493655815040
RA 82.3159 Dec -43.8645 J2000
Which indeed is RA 05:29:15.8 Dec -43:51:52
which is the same as you report
Thanks Gary, I browsed various on-line resources for the RA and DEC before my imaging session but could not find them.
So I cropped part of the ESO image and did a plate solve to locate the constellation and region and from there, matched it up with the sky chart in The Sky X Pro.
The ancient astronomers and philosophers could only dream of such tools in the hands of todays’ citizens.
Half a dozen of us observed J0529-4351 visually at Coonabarabran on Mon 11 March using a 25" Obsession.
Excellent news Gary.
I have since learned that the object designation also contains the J2000 RA and DEC coordinates, so there was no need for me to submit an Astrometry.net search.
ANU researchers discover fastest-growing black hole ever recordred
