Star Gives Birth to Possible Black Hole in Hubble and Spitzer Images

  • Released Thursday, May 25, 2017
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Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.

A team of astronomers at The Ohio State University watched a star disappear and possibly become a black hole. Instead of becoming a black hole through the expected process of a supernova, the black hole candidate formed through a "failed supernova." The team used NASA's Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes and the Large Binocular Telescope to observe and monitor the star throughout the past decade. If confirmed, this would be the first time anyone has witnessed the birth of a black hole and the first discovery of a failed supernova.

Read the NASA web feature here.

Find the full image release package at HubbleSite.org.

Read the full science paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Animated graph - Visible and infrared lightcurve of the star/black hole N6946-BH1

Animated graph - Visible lightcurve of the star/black hole N6946-BH1 with Hubble image insets

Credits

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NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

This page was originally published on Thursday, May 25, 2017.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:47 PM EDT.

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