Author: Loren Grush
ESO/L. Calçada
Astronomers have discovered what they think is a new black hole, and if they’re right, it’s not that far away from Earth. At a mere 1,000 light-years away, the small black hole would be our cosmic neighbor — the closest one to our planet ever found.
Being a black hole, the object is impossible to see directly with instruments from Earth, as no light escapes it. So scientists working at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile actually inferred that that object is where they think based on the movements of stars nearby, according to a new study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
The team was trying to get to the bottom of the weird behavior of these two stars that were close to one another in space in a system called HR 6819....
Continue reading…
Continue reading...
Astronomers have discovered what they think is a new black hole, and if they’re right, it’s not that far away from Earth. At a mere 1,000 light-years away, the small black hole would be our cosmic neighbor — the closest one to our planet ever found.
Being a black hole, the object is impossible to see directly with instruments from Earth, as no light escapes it. So scientists working at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile actually inferred that that object is where they think based on the movements of stars nearby, according to a new study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
The team was trying to get to the bottom of the weird behavior of these two stars that were close to one another in space in a system called HR 6819....
Continue reading…
Continue reading...