NASA's Chandra X-ray Space Telescope has provided new insights into a supermassive black hole located 210 million light-years away in the galaxy AT2019qiz, which has been observed tearing apart stars in a series of tidal disruption events (TDEs). The latest observations, made in 2023, reveal the black hole's ongoing activity as it hurls the remnants of a destroyed star towards another star or a smaller black hole.
Initially detected in 2019 by the Zwicky Transient Facility, the black hole's violent interactions were captured by multiple telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope. The stellar debris surrounding the black hole has formed a flattened cloud, with an orbiting object colliding with it repeatedly, generating flashes of X-rays detected by Chandra.
Matt Nicholl, team leader from Queen's University Belfast, likened the phenomenon to a diver creating splashes in a pool, with the star acting as the diver and the disk as the pool surface. This TDE process, known as 'spaghettification,' occurs when a star approaches a supermassive black hole, leading to its elongation and eventual destruction.
The research, published on October 9, 2023, in the journal Nature, confirms a connection between quasi-periodic eruptions and orbiting bodies within the accretion disk, marking a significant advancement in understanding these cosmic events. The findings suggest that astronomers can now predict the timing of these eruptions as they relate to the dynamics of the surrounding stellar material.
In another significant development, a small international team has confirmed that asteroid 2019 UO is a Trojan asteroid of Saturn. This designation was established through observations from multiple telescopes, confirming its orbit approximately 60 degrees ahead of Saturn. The asteroid, first observed in 2019, takes about 30 years to complete its orbit and is believed to have been a Trojan for only a few thousand years.
These advancements in understanding both black hole activity and Trojan asteroids contribute to the broader knowledge of celestial mechanics and the dynamic processes governing our solar system and beyond.