This is really exciting news. On Friday, NASA announced that its Swift satellite had found evidence of a new black hole inside the Milky Way galaxy. The evidence? A newly formed X-Ray nova, what NASA’s, Neil Gehrels calls a “once-a-mission event,” near the center of our galaxy.
Check out the video above for NASA’s explanation of the phenomenon. NASA’s press release explains:
An X-ray nova is a short-lived X-ray source that appears suddenly, reaches its emission peak in a few days and then fades out over a period of months. The outburst arises when a torrent of stored gas suddenly rushes toward one of the most compact objects known, either a neutron star or a black hole.
The rapidly brightening source triggered Swift’s Burst Alert Telescope twice on the morning of Sept. 16, and once again the next day.
Named Swift J1745-26 after the coordinates of its sky position, the nova is located a few degrees from the center of our galaxy toward the constellation Sagittarius. While astronomers do not know its precise distance, they think the object resides about 20,000 to 30,000 light-years away in the galaxy’s inner region.
More details at the link. [NASA via Washington Post]
