Weird Black Hole's Incredible Brightness Perplexes Scientists - Space.com
Weird Black Hole's Incredible Brightness Perplexes Scientists
By Mike Wall, Senior Writer - Space.com
November 27, 2013 01:00pm ET
Artist's conception of an ultraluminous X-ray source consisting of a small black hole and a nearby companion star. Credit: Jingchuan Yu
<snip>
A black-hole system in a neighboring galaxy is twice as bright as astronomers had thought possible, a new study reports.
The incredible luminosity of the system in question, which resides about 22 million light-years from Earth in the Pinwheel Galaxy, may force a rethink of the theories that explain how some black holes radiate energy, researchers said.
"As if black holes werent extreme enough, this is a really extreme one that is shining as brightly as it possibly can," study co-author Joel Bregman of the University of Michigan said in a statement. "Its figured out a way to be more luminous than we thought possible."
The astronomers studied a system called ULX-1, which consists of a black hole and a companion star that orbit each other. As its name suggests ULX is short for "ultraluminous X-ray source" ULX-1 generates prodigious amounts of high-energy X-ray light, which is emitted by material spiraling down into the black hole's maw.
This light is so intense, in fact, that astronomers had suspected that ULX-1 contains an intermediate-mass black hole one that harbors between 100 and 1,000 times the mass of the sun. But the new study suggests that the black hole is actually on the small side...
<snip>
More:
http://www.space.com/23755-black-hole-brightness-mystery.html