kimberly anne

rhamphotheca:

Spectacularly bright object in Andromeda caused by ‘normal’ black hole
provided by Royal Astronomical Society
An international team of scientists, led by Dr. Matt Middleton, of Durham University, analysed the Ultraluminous X-ray Source (ULX), which was originally discovered in the Andromeda galaxy by NASA’s Chandra x-ray observatory. They publish their results in the journals Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Many ULXs are too far away for astronomers to study, but the relatively close proximity of Andromeda to the Milky Way – around 2.5 million light years – gave the team opportunity to study the phenomenon. The researchers say their study could begin to answer the question about what causes ULXs. Some scientists believe they are caused by relatively small black holes, a few times the mass of our Sun. These black holes rapidly pull in gas and dust which forms an “accretion disc” and heats up causing the material to emit X-rays.
Other scientists say ULXs are caused by material being dragged in by an intermediate-sized black hole formed from the merger of many stellar black holes with a mass perhaps 1,000 times bigger than the Sun. The Durham-led findings link the ULX spotted in Andromeda to a normal stellar black hole formed after a massive star exploded as a supernova…
(read more: PhysOrg) (images: MPE)
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More information: The new work will be published in “The missing link: a low mass X-ray binary in M31 seen as an ultraluminous X-ray source”, Middleton, M. J. et al, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, in press. A preprint can be downloaded from: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011arXiv1111.1188M

Spectacularly bright object in Andromeda caused by ‘normal’ black hole

provided by Royal Astronomical Society

An international team of scientists, led by Dr. Matt Middleton, of Durham University, analysed the Ultraluminous X-ray Source (ULX), which was originally discovered in the Andromeda galaxy by NASA’s Chandra x-ray observatory. They publish their results in the journals Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Many ULXs are too far away for astronomers to study, but the relatively close proximity of Andromeda to the Milky Way – around 2.5 million light years – gave the team opportunity to study the phenomenon. The researchers say their study could begin to answer the question about what causes ULXs. Some scientists believe they are caused by relatively small black holes, a few times the mass of our Sun. These black holes rapidly pull in gas and dust which forms an “accretion disc” and heats up causing the material to emit X-rays.

Other scientists say ULXs are caused by material being dragged in by an intermediate-sized black hole formed from the merger of many stellar black holes with a mass perhaps 1,000 times bigger than the Sun. The Durham-led findings link the ULX spotted in Andromeda to a normal stellar black hole formed after a massive star exploded as a supernova…

(read more: PhysOrg) (images: MPE)

_____________________________________

More information: The new work will be published in “The missing link: a low mass X-ray binary in M31 seen as an ultraluminous X-ray source”, Middleton, M. J. et al, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, in press.
A preprint can be downloaded from: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011arXiv1111.1188M