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Astronomers see a black hole awaken in real time
In late 2019 the previously unremarkable galaxy SDSS1335+0728 suddenly started shining brighter than ever before. To understand why, astronomers have used data from several space and ground-based observatories, including the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), to track how the galaxy’s brightness has varied. In a study out today, they conclude that they are witnessing changes never seen before in a galaxy — likely the result of the sudden awakening of the massive black hole at its core.
“ Imagine you’ve been observing a distant galaxy for years, and it always seemed calm and inactive, ” says Paula Sánchez Sáez, an astronomer at ESO in Germany and lead author of the study accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. The team tried to understand these brightness variations using a combination of archival data and new observations from several facilities, including the X-shooter instrument on ESO’s VLT in Chile’s Atacama Desert[2]. “ The most tangible option to explain this phenomenon is that we are seeing how the [core] of the galaxy is beginning to show (...) activity,” says co-author Lorena Hernández García, from MAS and the University of Valparaíso in Chile.
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