DoD space agency to acquire 10 satellites for experiments in low Earth orbit
by Sandra Erwin — June 12, 2022
The Space Development Agency's vision for a national defense space architecture. Credit: SDA
This new procurement of satellites – known as the NExT experimental testbed – replaces a previous SDA program called T1DES
WASHINGTON — The Space Development Agency is looking to acquire as many as 10 satellites to host military payloads for experiments in low Earth orbit.
This new procurement of satellites – known as the NExT experimental testbed – replaces a previous SDA program called T1DES announced last fall.
The T1DES procurement was for 18 satellites hosting industry-developed experimental payloads. The plan was to integrate them with the agency’s 126-satellite broadband constellation known as the Transport Layer Tranche 1 projected to launch in 2024. Under the new plan, SDA will move forward with the deployment of the Transport Layer and will select a separate contractor to produce 10 satellites that will host government-developed payloads for technology experiments.
SDA will hold an industry day briefing June 22 to discuss the NExT procurement with potential contractors. The selected contractor will develop, manufacture and operate the NExT satellites and the ground systems for the duration of the contract.
The contractor also will be responsible for procuring commercial rideshare launches for the 10 NExT satellites. SDA wants the experimental payloads deployed between March 2024 and March 2025, in two planes of four and one plane of two.
The NExT satellites will have optical crosslink communications terminals so they can connect with the Transport Layer satellites.
by Sandra Erwin — June 12, 2022
The Space Development Agency's vision for a national defense space architecture. Credit: SDA
This new procurement of satellites – known as the NExT experimental testbed – replaces a previous SDA program called T1DES
WASHINGTON — The Space Development Agency is looking to acquire as many as 10 satellites to host military payloads for experiments in low Earth orbit.
This new procurement of satellites – known as the NExT experimental testbed – replaces a previous SDA program called T1DES announced last fall.
The T1DES procurement was for 18 satellites hosting industry-developed experimental payloads. The plan was to integrate them with the agency’s 126-satellite broadband constellation known as the Transport Layer Tranche 1 projected to launch in 2024. Under the new plan, SDA will move forward with the deployment of the Transport Layer and will select a separate contractor to produce 10 satellites that will host government-developed payloads for technology experiments.
SDA will hold an industry day briefing June 22 to discuss the NExT procurement with potential contractors. The selected contractor will develop, manufacture and operate the NExT satellites and the ground systems for the duration of the contract.
The contractor also will be responsible for procuring commercial rideshare launches for the 10 NExT satellites. SDA wants the experimental payloads deployed between March 2024 and March 2025, in two planes of four and one plane of two.
The NExT satellites will have optical crosslink communications terminals so they can connect with the Transport Layer satellites.
Xenesis signs launch pact with Evolution Space
by Debra Werner — June 10, 2022
Evolution Space is developing, building and testing small rockets in Mojave, Calif. Credit: Evolution Space
SAN FRANCISCO – Launch startup Evolution Space signed a memorandum of understanding to launch a small satellite constellation for optical communications startup Xenesis.
Under the $120 million deal signed in May, Evolution will conduct five suborbital and 25 orbital launches for Xenesis beginning in 2025.
Mojave, Calif.-based Evolution is taking an iterative approach to developing small solid rockets to deliver 250 to 450 kilograms to low-Earth orbit.
“We focus on simplicity and have no ambitions to build bigger rockets,” Steve Heller, Evolution founder and CEO, told SpaceNews. “We are starting with a suborbital platform and using that as a leap pad for an orbital platform.”
A subscale version of Evolution’s suborbital rocket, which will serve as the booster for company’s orbital vehicle, cost the company about $70,000 to build. That rocket reached an altitude of 56,219 meters during tests conducted in Mojave in November.
In May, Evolution conducted further tests of a new suborbital vehicle. That rocket, built in three weeks for less than $50,000, demonstrated improvement in the company’s guidance, navigation and control system, Heller said. Six more launches are scheduled to be completed within the next year.
Evolution, originally called Sugarhouse Aerospace, was founded in Salt Lake City in 2018. Since rebranding one year ago, the company has assembled a staff of 10 people, which it plans to double within a year.
“We’re solid propulsion geeks. We build every piece of our rockets” from the propulsion to starter pellets, Heller said.
The company’s streamlined approach makes it a good fit for the times, since investors are not as eager to back space companies as they were a year ago.
“I think the spend mirrors the market,” Heller said.
Working with Xenesis is helping Evolution refine its rocket development program.
“We’ve been looking for is a customer to tell us exactly what to build,” Heller said. “Is 250 kilograms to low-Earth orbit or is it 400? What’s more important: customizable inclinations or time to launch, because solids are broadly applicable to customers trying to put things up where they want, when they want?”
Founded in 2017, Xenesis plans to establish an optical communications constellation to provide connectivity for mobile network operators, internet service providers and enterprises.
Mark LaPenna, Xenesis founder and CEO, said he’s pleased to be working with Evolution because “these guys represent a paradigm shift in the way we do business in this industry.”
“It’s the rapid iteration,” LaPenna said. “It’s the fail fast, succeed fast mentality that these guys are hammering home. It’s also a high degree of professionalism. They have a build schedule. They’re executing.”
by Debra Werner — June 10, 2022
Evolution Space is developing, building and testing small rockets in Mojave, Calif. Credit: Evolution Space
SAN FRANCISCO – Launch startup Evolution Space signed a memorandum of understanding to launch a small satellite constellation for optical communications startup Xenesis.
Under the $120 million deal signed in May, Evolution will conduct five suborbital and 25 orbital launches for Xenesis beginning in 2025.
Mojave, Calif.-based Evolution is taking an iterative approach to developing small solid rockets to deliver 250 to 450 kilograms to low-Earth orbit.
“We focus on simplicity and have no ambitions to build bigger rockets,” Steve Heller, Evolution founder and CEO, told SpaceNews. “We are starting with a suborbital platform and using that as a leap pad for an orbital platform.”
A subscale version of Evolution’s suborbital rocket, which will serve as the booster for company’s orbital vehicle, cost the company about $70,000 to build. That rocket reached an altitude of 56,219 meters during tests conducted in Mojave in November.
In May, Evolution conducted further tests of a new suborbital vehicle. That rocket, built in three weeks for less than $50,000, demonstrated improvement in the company’s guidance, navigation and control system, Heller said. Six more launches are scheduled to be completed within the next year.
Evolution, originally called Sugarhouse Aerospace, was founded in Salt Lake City in 2018. Since rebranding one year ago, the company has assembled a staff of 10 people, which it plans to double within a year.
“We’re solid propulsion geeks. We build every piece of our rockets” from the propulsion to starter pellets, Heller said.
The company’s streamlined approach makes it a good fit for the times, since investors are not as eager to back space companies as they were a year ago.
“I think the spend mirrors the market,” Heller said.
Working with Xenesis is helping Evolution refine its rocket development program.
“We’ve been looking for is a customer to tell us exactly what to build,” Heller said. “Is 250 kilograms to low-Earth orbit or is it 400? What’s more important: customizable inclinations or time to launch, because solids are broadly applicable to customers trying to put things up where they want, when they want?”
Founded in 2017, Xenesis plans to establish an optical communications constellation to provide connectivity for mobile network operators, internet service providers and enterprises.
Mark LaPenna, Xenesis founder and CEO, said he’s pleased to be working with Evolution because “these guys represent a paradigm shift in the way we do business in this industry.”
“It’s the rapid iteration,” LaPenna said. “It’s the fail fast, succeed fast mentality that these guys are hammering home. It’s also a high degree of professionalism. They have a build schedule. They’re executing.”
'Dark' black hole wandering the Milky Way may be the smallest yet detected
By Keith Cooper published about 1 hour ago
The stellar-mass black hole is likely one of 100 million solitary black holes in the Milky Way, scientists said.
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Artist's illustration showing a black hole at the center of the image, surrounded by stars in the Milky Way.
Artist's illustration of a black hole drifting through the Milky Way. (Image credit: FECYT, IAC)
A rogue black hole wandering the space lanes of our Milky Way galaxy alone could be the smallest black hole yet found, according to one estimate of its mass.
Earlier this year, astronomers led by Kailash Sahu of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, announced the discovery of the first known isolated stellar-mass black hole.
The black hole is 5,000 light-years away and was discovered thanks to the power of its gravity to act as a gravitational lens, magnifying the light of a background star 19,000 light-years away. It was initially spotted by two ground-based surveys, the Polish-led Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) which mostly uses the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, and the Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics (MOA) project at the Mount John University Observatory in New Zealand.
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Sahu's team used the Hubble Space Telescope to follow up on the discovery, and the degree of gravitational lensing allowed them to conclude that the black hole has a mass about 7.1 times greater than the sun's mass.
However, a second team has now come forward with a different mass calculation. The group, led by Casey Lam of the University of California, Berkeley, concluded that the object has a mass between 1.6 and 4.4 times the mass of the sun. If correct, then this could have intriguing implications.
Stellar-mass black holes are the product of the supernovae of stars with masses 20 times greater than the Sun. On the other hand, when stars with between 8 and 20 solar masses go supernovae, they leave behind a neutron star instead.
RELATED STORIES:
— A black hole formed by a lopsided merger may have gone rogue
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Neutron stars can theoretically have masses up to about 2.3 solar masses. Observations of stellar-mass black holes detectable in binary systems have not turned up any with less than 5 solar masses, creating a gap between the most massive neutron stars and the least massive black holes. If the black hole is at the upper end of Lam's mass range, it would help plug this gap. (Several candidate gravitational-wave events have also been detected involving objects that fall into this mass gap.)
"Whatever it is, the object is the first dark stellar remnant discovered wandering through the galaxy unaccompanied by another star," said Lam in a NASA statement(opens in new tab).
Star filled image with four close-up images of a star changing brightness.
A composite image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope shows the change in brightness of a star caused by a foreground black hole drifting in front of it. The apparent brightening of the background star is caused by gravitational lensing. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, Kailash Sahu (STScI) IMAGE PROCESSING: Joseph DePasquale (STScI))
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Even though stars with more than 20 solar masses account for just 0.1% of all the stars in the Milky Way, there are so many stars in the Milky Way (an estimated 100–200 billion), and the Milky Way is so old (approximately 13 billion years) that there should now be 100 million or more stellar-mass black holes in our galaxy.
Many of these are found in binary systems, where their presence is evident from their gravitational pull on their companion star and their accretion of m
By Keith Cooper published about 1 hour ago
The stellar-mass black hole is likely one of 100 million solitary black holes in the Milky Way, scientists said.
(opens in new tab)
(opens in new tab)
(opens in new tab)
(opens in new tab)
(opens in new tab)
Artist's illustration showing a black hole at the center of the image, surrounded by stars in the Milky Way.
Artist's illustration of a black hole drifting through the Milky Way. (Image credit: FECYT, IAC)
A rogue black hole wandering the space lanes of our Milky Way galaxy alone could be the smallest black hole yet found, according to one estimate of its mass.
Earlier this year, astronomers led by Kailash Sahu of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, announced the discovery of the first known isolated stellar-mass black hole.
The black hole is 5,000 light-years away and was discovered thanks to the power of its gravity to act as a gravitational lens, magnifying the light of a background star 19,000 light-years away. It was initially spotted by two ground-based surveys, the Polish-led Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) which mostly uses the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, and the Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics (MOA) project at the Mount John University Observatory in New Zealand.
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Sahu's team used the Hubble Space Telescope to follow up on the discovery, and the degree of gravitational lensing allowed them to conclude that the black hole has a mass about 7.1 times greater than the sun's mass.
However, a second team has now come forward with a different mass calculation. The group, led by Casey Lam of the University of California, Berkeley, concluded that the object has a mass between 1.6 and 4.4 times the mass of the sun. If correct, then this could have intriguing implications.
Stellar-mass black holes are the product of the supernovae of stars with masses 20 times greater than the Sun. On the other hand, when stars with between 8 and 20 solar masses go supernovae, they leave behind a neutron star instead.
RELATED STORIES:
— A black hole formed by a lopsided merger may have gone rogue
— Listen to the 'echoes' of black holes chowing down on stars
— Building a better black hole with supercomputer simulations
Neutron stars can theoretically have masses up to about 2.3 solar masses. Observations of stellar-mass black holes detectable in binary systems have not turned up any with less than 5 solar masses, creating a gap between the most massive neutron stars and the least massive black holes. If the black hole is at the upper end of Lam's mass range, it would help plug this gap. (Several candidate gravitational-wave events have also been detected involving objects that fall into this mass gap.)
"Whatever it is, the object is the first dark stellar remnant discovered wandering through the galaxy unaccompanied by another star," said Lam in a NASA statement(opens in new tab).
Star filled image with four close-up images of a star changing brightness.
A composite image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope shows the change in brightness of a star caused by a foreground black hole drifting in front of it. The apparent brightening of the background star is caused by gravitational lensing. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, Kailash Sahu (STScI) IMAGE PROCESSING: Joseph DePasquale (STScI))
(opens in new tab)
Even though stars with more than 20 solar masses account for just 0.1% of all the stars in the Milky Way, there are so many stars in the Milky Way (an estimated 100–200 billion), and the Milky Way is so old (approximately 13 billion years) that there should now be 100 million or more stellar-mass black holes in our galaxy.
Many of these are found in binary systems, where their presence is evident from their gravitational pull on their companion star and their accretion of m
atter from their neighbor. One has even been found inside a star cluster, NGC 1850 in the Large Magellanic Cloud. However, many others will be wandering between the stars, going unnoticed until a chance alignment with a background star means we spot them creating a gravitational lens.
This discovery is just the tip of the iceberg. NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is planned for launch in 2027, will survey large swathes of the Milky Way and is expected to identify several thousand microlensing events, many of which could be black holes.
This discovery is just the tip of the iceberg. NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is planned for launch in 2027, will survey large swathes of the Milky Way and is expected to identify several thousand microlensing events, many of which could be black holes.
Scientists think they've detected radio emissions from an alien world
By Meghan Bartels published December 17, 2020
Similar findings may tell scientists about magnetic fields around exoplanets.
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Scientists may have detected radio emissions from a planet orbiting a star beyond our sun for the first time.
The astronomers behind the new research used a radio telescope in the Netherlands to study three different stars known to host exoplanets. The researchers compared what they saw to observations of Jupiter, diluted as if being seen from a star system dozens of light-years away. And one star system stood out: Tau Boötes, which contains at least one exoplanet. If the detection holds up, it could open the door to better understanding the magnetic fields of exoplanets and therefore the exoplanets themselves, the researchers hope.
"We present one of the first hints of detecting an exoplanet in the radio realm," Jake Turner, an astronomer at Cornell University and lead author of the new research, said in a statement. "We make the case for an emission by the planet itself. From the strength and polarization of the radio signal and the planet's magnetic field, it is compatible with theoretical predictions."
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However, Turner and his colleagues aren't yet positive that the signal they detected really is coming from the planet, dubbed Tau Boötes b; the researchers called for additional observations of the system, which is about 51 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Boötes.
The new research actually began at Jupiter; the researchers had previously studied that planet's radio emissions and then tweaked those measurements to reflect the effect they expected closeness to the host star and distance from Earth would have had on their observations of an exoplanet.
Then, the scientists consulted observations made in 2016 and 2017 by the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) in the Netherlands. In addition to the potential signal from Tau Boötes b, the researchers also report that they may have picked up a signal from the star Upsilon Andromedae or its planet, but that detection was even fainter than the one from Tau Boötes b.
The researchers are interested in detecting radio emission from planets because such information may help scientists decipher what's happening in the same worlds' magnetic fields. Those magnetic fields, in turn, influence conditions on the surface of the planet — Earth's magnetic field protects the atmosphere that makes the world one we can survive, for example. Such magnetic fields can also tell scientists about other qualities of a world, like its structure and history.
An artist's depiction of the exoplanet Tau Boötes b shows a magnetic field, which may cause the radio emissions scientists believe they have detected.
An artist's depiction of the exoplanet Tau Boötes b shows a magnetic field, which may cause the radio emissions scientists believe they have detected. (Image credit: Jack Madden/Cornell University)
But so far, studying those magnetic fields directly has been difficult for scientists to manage, despite the fact that nearly every planet in our solar system has had one at some point in its history. Hence the interest in using radio emissions as an intermediate.
"We learned from our own Jupiter what this kind of detection looks like," Turner said. "We went searching for it and we found it."
But that's just the beginning of the story, not the end of it, he emphasized, since the radio emissions could still be coming from the stars or another source instead of the planet. "There remains some uncertainty that the detected radio signal is from the planet. The need for follow-up observations is critical."
By Meghan Bartels published December 17, 2020
Similar findings may tell scientists about magnetic fields around exoplanets.
Click here for more Space.com videos...
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Scientists may have detected radio emissions from a planet orbiting a star beyond our sun for the first time.
The astronomers behind the new research used a radio telescope in the Netherlands to study three different stars known to host exoplanets. The researchers compared what they saw to observations of Jupiter, diluted as if being seen from a star system dozens of light-years away. And one star system stood out: Tau Boötes, which contains at least one exoplanet. If the detection holds up, it could open the door to better understanding the magnetic fields of exoplanets and therefore the exoplanets themselves, the researchers hope.
"We present one of the first hints of detecting an exoplanet in the radio realm," Jake Turner, an astronomer at Cornell University and lead author of the new research, said in a statement. "We make the case for an emission by the planet itself. From the strength and polarization of the radio signal and the planet's magnetic field, it is compatible with theoretical predictions."
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However, Turner and his colleagues aren't yet positive that the signal they detected really is coming from the planet, dubbed Tau Boötes b; the researchers called for additional observations of the system, which is about 51 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Boötes.
The new research actually began at Jupiter; the researchers had previously studied that planet's radio emissions and then tweaked those measurements to reflect the effect they expected closeness to the host star and distance from Earth would have had on their observations of an exoplanet.
Then, the scientists consulted observations made in 2016 and 2017 by the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) in the Netherlands. In addition to the potential signal from Tau Boötes b, the researchers also report that they may have picked up a signal from the star Upsilon Andromedae or its planet, but that detection was even fainter than the one from Tau Boötes b.
The researchers are interested in detecting radio emission from planets because such information may help scientists decipher what's happening in the same worlds' magnetic fields. Those magnetic fields, in turn, influence conditions on the surface of the planet — Earth's magnetic field protects the atmosphere that makes the world one we can survive, for example. Such magnetic fields can also tell scientists about other qualities of a world, like its structure and history.
An artist's depiction of the exoplanet Tau Boötes b shows a magnetic field, which may cause the radio emissions scientists believe they have detected.
An artist's depiction of the exoplanet Tau Boötes b shows a magnetic field, which may cause the radio emissions scientists believe they have detected. (Image credit: Jack Madden/Cornell University)
But so far, studying those magnetic fields directly has been difficult for scientists to manage, despite the fact that nearly every planet in our solar system has had one at some point in its history. Hence the interest in using radio emissions as an intermediate.
"We learned from our own Jupiter what this kind of detection looks like," Turner said. "We went searching for it and we found it."
But that's just the beginning of the story, not the end of it, he emphasized, since the radio emissions could still be coming from the stars or another source instead of the planet. "There remains some uncertainty that the detected radio signal is from the planet. The need for follow-up observations is critical."
'Starquakes' shake the surface of thousands of stars, Gaia galaxy mapper reveals
By Tereza Pultarova published 1 day ago
"Blinking stars do offer astronomers a very powerful tool to study their internal physics and chemistry."
The latest release of data from the European Gaia mission reveals our galaxy, the Milky Way, in new colors.
The latest release of data from the European Gaia mission reveals our galaxy, the Milky Way, in new colors. (Image credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC)
The galaxy-mapping mission Gaia has detected thousands of stellar earthquakes that might provide new insights into the inner workings of stars.
The discovery is rather surprising as the spacecraft was not designed to do such work, Conny Aerts, an astronomer at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, said in a European Space Agency (ESA) press conference on Monday, June 13.
"These vibrations make the stellar gas move up and down," Aer
By Tereza Pultarova published 1 day ago
"Blinking stars do offer astronomers a very powerful tool to study their internal physics and chemistry."
The latest release of data from the European Gaia mission reveals our galaxy, the Milky Way, in new colors.
The latest release of data from the European Gaia mission reveals our galaxy, the Milky Way, in new colors. (Image credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC)
The galaxy-mapping mission Gaia has detected thousands of stellar earthquakes that might provide new insights into the inner workings of stars.
The discovery is rather surprising as the spacecraft was not designed to do such work, Conny Aerts, an astronomer at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, said in a European Space Agency (ESA) press conference on Monday, June 13.
"These vibrations make the stellar gas move up and down," Aer
Did China just detect signals from an alien civilization?
By Leonard David published about 1 hour ago
Probably not, experts say.
The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) in southwest China's Guizhou Province.
China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope, or FAST. (Image credit: NAO/FAST)
The internet is abuzz with rumors that China may have picked up signals from an alien civilization.
The news centers on observations by China's "Sky Eye" — the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), which is located in southwestern Guizhou province.
One report, by the state-backed Science and Technology Daily, cited Zhang Tonjie, chief scientist of an extraterrestrial civilization search team co-founded by Beijing Normal University, the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of California, Berkeley.
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By Leonard David published about 1 hour ago
Probably not, experts say.
The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) in southwest China's Guizhou Province.
China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope, or FAST. (Image credit: NAO/FAST)
The internet is abuzz with rumors that China may have picked up signals from an alien civilization.
The news centers on observations by China's "Sky Eye" — the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), which is located in southwestern Guizhou province.
One report, by the state-backed Science and Technology Daily, cited Zhang Tonjie, chief scientist of an extraterrestrial civilization search team co-founded by Beijing Normal University, the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of California, Berkeley.
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Fastest-growing black hole ever seen is devouring the equivalent of 1 Earth per second
By Robert Lea published 38 minutes ago
This behemoth has been powering an ultrabright quasar for 9 billion years.
A black hole and accretion disk
An illustration of a black hole surrounded by an accretion disk feeding it. (Image credit: ESO, ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser)
The fastest-growing black hole ever seen is swallowing the mass equivalent of an entire Earth every second.
This gargantuan black hole has a mass 3 billion times that of the sun, and its rapid consumption is causing the behemoth to grow rapidly, an international research team found. The black hole gorges via a process called accretion, in which it siphons matter from a thin disk of gas and dust rotating around the massive object.
Other black holes of a similar size stopped growing billions of years ago, but this newly discovered black hole is still getting larger. It's now 500 times bigger than Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, and would fit the whole solar system behind its event horizon, the boundary beyond which nothing can escape.
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Based on this information, the researchers determined that the newfound black hole is the most rapidly growing black hole found to exist in the past 9 billion years.
"Now, we want to know why this one is different — did something catastrophic happen?" lead researcher Christopher Onken, a researcher at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University (ANU), said in a statement(opens in new tab). "Perhaps two big galaxies crashed into each other, funneling a whole lot of material onto the black hole to feed it."
This rapid accretion of matter to the surface of the black hole has also resulted in a quasar blasting out enough energy to make it 7,000 times brighter than the light from every star in the Milky Way. In fact, this quasar (designated SMSS J114447.77- 430859.3) is also the most luminous of these events for around the past two-thirds of the universe's 13.8 billion-year existence.
The quasar has a brightness of magnitude 14.5 when viewed from Earth, meaning it is only slightly dimmer than Pluto and bright enough to potentially be spotted by skywatchers with good telescopes in a very dark area.
The discovery of the feeding black hole was made as part of the SkyMapper Southern Sky Survey, conducted by the 1.3-meter (4.3 feet) telescope at Siding Spring Observatory in Australia.
An illustration of a quasar.
An illustration of a distant quasar; powered by feeding black holes, quasars are some of the most luminous objects in the universe. (Image credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser)
Despite the quasar's incredible brightness, Onken and his team still described the finding as a "very large, unexpected needle in the haystack."
"Astronomers have been hunting for objects like this for more than 50 years," Onken said. "They have found thousands of fainter ones, but this astonishingly bright one had slipped through unnoticed."
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Christian Wolf, an associate professor at ANU and a member of the research team, said that he thinks astronomers are unlikely to find another black hole growing at this rate or powering a quasar of this magnitude or greater.
"We have essentially run out of sky where objects like this could be hiding," Wolf said. "We are fairly confident this record will not be broken."
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A paper detailing the discovery has been submitted to the journal Publications of the Astronomical
By Robert Lea published 38 minutes ago
This behemoth has been powering an ultrabright quasar for 9 billion years.
A black hole and accretion disk
An illustration of a black hole surrounded by an accretion disk feeding it. (Image credit: ESO, ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser)
The fastest-growing black hole ever seen is swallowing the mass equivalent of an entire Earth every second.
This gargantuan black hole has a mass 3 billion times that of the sun, and its rapid consumption is causing the behemoth to grow rapidly, an international research team found. The black hole gorges via a process called accretion, in which it siphons matter from a thin disk of gas and dust rotating around the massive object.
Other black holes of a similar size stopped growing billions of years ago, but this newly discovered black hole is still getting larger. It's now 500 times bigger than Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, and would fit the whole solar system behind its event horizon, the boundary beyond which nothing can escape.
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Related: Listen to the 'echoes' of black holes chowing down on stars
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Based on this information, the researchers determined that the newfound black hole is the most rapidly growing black hole found to exist in the past 9 billion years.
"Now, we want to know why this one is different — did something catastrophic happen?" lead researcher Christopher Onken, a researcher at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University (ANU), said in a statement(opens in new tab). "Perhaps two big galaxies crashed into each other, funneling a whole lot of material onto the black hole to feed it."
This rapid accretion of matter to the surface of the black hole has also resulted in a quasar blasting out enough energy to make it 7,000 times brighter than the light from every star in the Milky Way. In fact, this quasar (designated SMSS J114447.77- 430859.3) is also the most luminous of these events for around the past two-thirds of the universe's 13.8 billion-year existence.
The quasar has a brightness of magnitude 14.5 when viewed from Earth, meaning it is only slightly dimmer than Pluto and bright enough to potentially be spotted by skywatchers with good telescopes in a very dark area.
The discovery of the feeding black hole was made as part of the SkyMapper Southern Sky Survey, conducted by the 1.3-meter (4.3 feet) telescope at Siding Spring Observatory in Australia.
An illustration of a quasar.
An illustration of a distant quasar; powered by feeding black holes, quasars are some of the most luminous objects in the universe. (Image credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser)
Despite the quasar's incredible brightness, Onken and his team still described the finding as a "very large, unexpected needle in the haystack."
"Astronomers have been hunting for objects like this for more than 50 years," Onken said. "They have found thousands of fainter ones, but this astonishingly bright one had slipped through unnoticed."
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Christian Wolf, an associate professor at ANU and a member of the research team, said that he thinks astronomers are unlikely to find another black hole growing at this rate or powering a quasar of this magnitude or greater.
"We have essentially run out of sky where objects like this could be hiding," Wolf said. "We are fairly confident this record will not be broken."
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A paper detailing the discovery has been submitted to the journal Publications of the Astronomical
Society of Australia but has not yet been peer reviewed. A preprint version is available via thearXiv database.
Ready for liftoff!
We've selected seven new flight directors to oversee NASA's future missions to the
@Space_Station
, the Moon, and beyond from
@NASA_Johnson
's Mission Control Center. Meet the crew: https://go.nasa.gov/39QzNSp
We've selected seven new flight directors to oversee NASA's future missions to the
@Space_Station
, the Moon, and beyond from
@NASA_Johnson
's Mission Control Center. Meet the crew: https://go.nasa.gov/39QzNSp
NASA
NASA Introduces 2022 Class of Flight Directors
NASA has selected seven new additions to the team of flight directors to oversee operations of the International Space Station, commercial crew, and Artemis missions to the Moon.