Milky Way’s monster black hole awoke 300 years ago
PARIS (AFP) - A black hole slumbering at the centre of our galaxy went into a “feeding frenzy” three centuries ago, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Tuesday.
Located around 26,000 light years from Earth, the black hole, known as Sagittarius A-star (Sgr A*), is a monster with a mass four million times that of the Sun.
Japanese astronomers, using ESA’s XMM-Newton orbital telescope and US and Japanese X-ray satellites, discovered that clouds of gas brightened and faded in X-ray light when they passed near Sgr A*’s maw, ESA said in a press release.
The phenomenon is due to X-ray pulses that are believed to be residual bursts from a flare that happened 300 years ago.