This artist’s illustration shows what astronomers call a “tidal disruption event,” or TDE, when an object such as a star gets too close to a black hole and is destroyed by the tidal forces generated by the intense forces. gravitational factors of the black hole. (Credit: NASA / CXC / M.Weiss.

Supermassive black holes (SMBH) reside at the center of galaxies like the Milky Way. They are incredibly massive, ranging from 1 million to 10 billion solar masses. Their smaller siblings, intermediate mass black holes (IMBH), which range from 100 to 100,000 solar masses, are harder to find.

Astronomers have detected an intermediate-mass black hole destroying a star that got too close. They have learned a lot from their observations and hope to find even more of these black holes. Looking at more of them can lead to understanding how SMBHs got so massive.

When a star gets too close to a powerful black hole, a tidal disruption event (TDE) occurs. The star is torn apart and its constituent matter is drawn into the black hole, where it is trapped in the hole in the hole. accretion disk. The event unleashes an enormous amount of energy, outshining every star in the galaxy for months, even years.

That is what happened to TDE 3XMM J215022.4-055108, which is more easily known as TDE J2150. Astronomers were only able to detect the elusive IMBH due to the burst of X-rays emitted by hot gas from the star as it broke apart. J2150 is about 740 million light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Aquarius. Now a team of researchers has used observations of the distant J2150 and existing scientific models to learn more about the IMBH.

They have published their results in a paper entitled “Mass, spin and ultralight bosons constraints of the intermediate mass black hole in the 3XMM J215022.4 tidal disruption event?” 055108. ”Lead author is Sixiang Wen of the University of Arizona. The article is published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Supermassive black holes (SMBH) reside at the center of galaxies like the Milky Way. They are incredibly massive, ranging from 1 million to 10 billion solar masses. Their smaller siblings, intermediate mass black holes (IMBH), which range from 100 to 100,000 solar masses, are harder to find.

Astronomers have detected an intermediate-mass black hole destroying a star that got too close. They have learned a lot from their observations and hope to find even more of these black holes. Looking at more of them can lead to understanding how SMBHs got so massive.

When a star gets too close to a powerful black hole, a tidal disruption event (TDE) occurs. The star is torn apart and its constituent matter is drawn into the black hole, where it is trapped in the hole in the hole. accretion disk. The event unleashes an enormous amount of energy, outshining every star in the galaxy for months, even years.

That is what happened to TDE 3XMM J215022.4-055108, which is more easily known as TDE J2150. Astronomers were only able to detect the elusive IMBH due to the burst of X-rays emitted by hot gas from the star as it broke apart. J2150 is about 740 million light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Aquarius. Now a team of researchers has used observations of the distant J2150 and existing scientific models to learn more about the IMBH.

They have published their results in a paper entitled “Mass, spin and ultralight bosons constraints of the intermediate mass black hole in the 3XMM J215022.4 tidal disruption event?” 055108. ”Lead author is Sixiang Wen of the University of Arizona. The article is published in The Astrophysical Journal.

“The fact that we were able to catch this invisible black hole while it was devouring a star offers an extraordinary opportunity to observe what would otherwise be invisible.”

ANN ZABLUDOFF, CO-AUTHOR, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA.

IMBHs are elusive and difficult to study. Astronomers have found several of them in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies. For the most part, they have been detected due to their active low-luminosity galactic nuclei. In 2019, the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave observatories detected a gravitational wave from the merger of two IMBHs. As it stands now, there is a catalog of only 305 IMBH candidates, although scientists believe they could be common in galactic centers.

One of the problems with seeing them is their low mass itself. While SMBHs can be found by observing how their mass affects the stellar dynamics of nearby stars, IMBHs are often too small to do the same. Its gravity is not powerful enough to change the orbits of nearby stars.

“The fact that we could catch this black hole while it was devouring a star offers an extraordinary opportunity to observe what would otherwise be invisible,” said Ann Zabludoff, an Arizona astronomy professor and co-author of the paper. “Not only that, by analyzing the flare we were able to better understand this elusive category of black holes, which may well represent the majority of black holes at the centers of galaxies.”

This is a Hubble image of J2150 in the white circle. It is located within a dense star cluster some 740 million light-years away. X-ray emissions from TDE were used to detect the IMBH, but Hubble’s visible light capabilities were needed to pinpoint its location. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Lin (University of New Hampshire)
It was the X-ray eruption that made the event visible. The team compared the observed radiographs with models and was able to confirm the presence of an IMBH. “X-ray emissions from the inner disk formed by debris from the dead star made it possible for us to infer the mass and spin of this black hole and classify it as an intermediate black hole,” said lead author Wen.

This is the first time that the observations have been detailed enough to allow a TDE flare to be used to confirm the presence of an IMBH. It’s a big problem, because while we know that SMBHs are at the center of galaxies like the Milky Way and larger, our understanding of smaller galaxies and their IMBHs is much more limited. They are really hard to see.

“We still know very little about the existence of black holes at the centers of galaxies smaller than the Milky Way,” said co-author Peter Jonker of Radboud University and the SRON Institute for Space Research in the Netherlands, both in the Netherlands. “Due to observational limitations, it is challenging to discover central black holes much smaller than 1 million solar masses.”

Supermassive black holes (SMBH) reside at the center of galaxies like the Milky Way. They are incredibly massive, ranging from 1 million to 10 billion solar masses. Their smaller siblings, intermediate mass black holes (IMBH), which range from 100 to 100,000 solar masses, are harder to find.

Astronomers have detected an intermediate-mass black hole destroying a star that got too close. They have learned a lot from their observations and hope to find even more of these black holes. Looking at more of them can lead to understanding how SMBHs got so massive.

When a star gets too close to a powerful black hole, a tidal disruption event (TDE) occurs. The star is torn apart and its constituent matter is drawn into the black hole, where it is trapped in the hole in the hole. accretion disk. The event unleashes an enormous amount of energy, outshining every star in the galaxy for months, even years.

That is what happened to TDE 3XMM J215022.4-055108, which is more easily known as TDE J2150. Astronomers were only able to detect the elusive IMBH due to the burst of X-rays emitted by hot gas from the star as it broke apart. J2150 is about 740 million light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Aquarius. Now a team of researchers has used observations of the distant J2150 and existing scientific models to learn more about the IMBH.

They have published their results in a paper entitled “Mass, spin and ultralight bosons constraints of the intermediate mass black hole in the 3XMM J215022.4 tidal disruption event?” 055108. ”Lead author is Sixiang Wen of the University of Arizona. The article is published in The Astrophysical Journal.

“The fact that we were able to catch this invisible black hole while it was devouring a star offers an extraordinary opportunity to observe what would otherwise be invisible.”

ANN ZABLUDOFF, CO-AUTHOR, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA.

IMBHs are elusive and difficult to study. Astronomers have found several of them in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies. For the most part, they have been detected due to their active low-luminosity galactic nuclei. In 2019, the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave observatories detected a gravitational wave from the merger of two IMBHs. As it stands now, there is a catalog of only 305 IMBH candidates, although scientists believe they could be common in galactic centers.

One of the problems with seeing them is their low mass itself. While SMBHs can be found by observing how their mass affects the stellar dynamics of nearby stars, IMBHs are often too small to do the same. Its gravity is not powerful enough to change the orbits of nearby stars.

“The fact that we could catch this black hole while it was devouring a star offers an extraordinary opportunity to observe what would otherwise be invisible,” said Ann Zabludoff, an Arizona astronomy professor and co-author of the paper. “Not only that, by analyzing the flare we were able to better understand this elusive category of black holes, which may well represent the majority of black holes at the centers of galaxies.”

This is a Hubble image of J2150 in the white circle. It is located within a dense star cluster some 740 million light-years away. X-ray emissions from TDE were used to detect the IMBH, but Hubble’s visible light capabilities were needed to pinpoint its location. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Lin (University of New Hampshire)
It was the X-ray eruption that made the event visible. The team compared the observed radiographs with models and was able to confirm the presence of an IMBH. “X-ray emissions from the inner disk formed by debris from the dead star made it possible for us to infer the mass and spin of this black hole and classify it as an intermediate black hole,” said lead author Wen.

This is the first time that the observations have been detailed enough to allow a TDE flare to be used to confirm the presence of an IMBH. It’s a big problem, because while we know that SMBHs are at the center of galaxies like the Milky Way and larger, our understanding of smaller galaxies and their IMBHs is much more limited. They are really hard to see.

“We still know very little about the existence of black holes at the centers of galaxies smaller than the Milky Way,” said co-author Peter Jonker of Radboud University and the SRON Institute for Space Research in the Netherlands, both in the Netherlands.