[Regnum] Astronomers have for the first time tracked in real time the development of a third giant X-ray flare from the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy IC 3599. This was reported in the journal Phys.org.
The galaxy is located approximately 280 million light-years from Earth. Previous outbursts at its center were observed in 1990 and 2010, but they were discovered and analyzed in detail after their brightness had faded. This time, scientists have been monitoring the object since 2013 using the Neil Gehrels Swift space observatory and detected the outburst in its developing stage.
The flare's spectrum is considered ultra-soft; the equipment detected almost no photons with energies above 2.5 keV. This means that most of the energy came from low-energy X-rays. The flare's brightness corresponded to the theoretical maximum—the limit at which a black hole consumes matter at its maximum possible rate. Scientists estimated the black hole's mass at approximately 2 million solar masses.
The ability to observe the process of the birth of ultra-soft black hole outbursts from the very beginning, rather than reconstructing it after the fact, gives scientists access for the first time to study the early stages of the development of such phenomena.
Earlier, Cambridge University Professor Sera Markoff, one of the founders of the international Event Horizon Telescope project, announced that astronomers are preparing to film the first-ever video of a black hole, which will allow them to track its behavior over time.
In 2024, scientists announced the discovery of the largest stellar-mass black hole in the Milky Way. Discovered by the European orbital observatory GAIA, Gaia BH3 has a mass 33 times that of the Sun and is located approximately 2,000 light-years from Earth. The black hole was classified as a sleeping giant, a type of star that does not absorb matter from its companion stars and is therefore extremely difficult to detect.