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Legacy article – Astronomy and observation

Youngest Blackhole Found?

Original publication date
15 November 2010
Original section
Astronomy and observation
Original slug / legacy ID
youngest-blackhole-found / 189
Restored on current site
martinpeniak.com/archive/writing/youngest-blackhole-found/
Editing scope
Period voice retained; spelling and formatting lightly cleaned.

Originally published 15 November 2010 on the earlier martinpeniak.com site.

Preserved as part of the astronomy and observation thread around cameras, optics, and the sky. The article keeps its period voice, with light formatting cleanup.

M100

NASA broadcasted a conference about the discovery by Chandra observatory that could potentially be the youngest blackhole ever detected. This object is a remnant of the 1979c supernova in M100 galaxy (picture on the left; source: ESA), which was a star of 20 solar mases that exploded in 1979 and reached extremely bright luminosity (one of the brightest supernovae ever seen) in this process. This supernova got much more attention after many years when new observations showed that its brightness did not come down, which is what should normally happen.

What is not yet clear, however, is whether this object is really a blackhole or a pulsar wind nebula. Blackholes and pulsar wind nebulae have different X-ray spectra but scientists said during the conference that more observations need to be done so they could say for sure what the object is. At the moment the spectra analysis does seem to be very similar and we just do not know yet. If it was a black hole then this would be particularly interesting given the low mass of the star and it would be the first blackhole that we know the birthday of.