Tag Archive for 'N6946-BH1' | Sci.News

This pair of visible-light and near-infrared Hubble photos shows N6946-BH1 before and after it vanished out of sight by imploding to form a black hole. The left image shows the star as it looked in 2007. In 2009, the star shot up in brightness to become over 1 million times more luminous than our Sun for several months. But then it seemed to vanish, as seen in the right panel image from 2015. A small amount of IR light has been detected from where the star used to be. This radiation probably comes from debris falling onto a black hole. Image credit: NASA / ESA / C. Kochanek, Ohio State University.

Red Supergiant Fails to Explode as Supernova, Collapses into Black Hole

May 26, 2017 by News Staff

Astronomers have watched as N6946-BH1, a red supergiant with a mass of 25 solar masses in the spiral galaxy NGC 6946, was likely reborn as a black hole. This...