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Gigantic Black Hole Discovered

© Pattie Stechschulte

Finally, for the first time in history, scientists believe to have found a black hole near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory caught an image of a large X-ray flare from the direction of the discovered black hole while observing Sagittarius A*.

Many believe that a black hole is the most powerful object in the universe with intensive gravity that does not even allow light to escape. Scientists have theorized that was a black hole in this area because research shows stars swirling around the galaxy's center.

Fredrick Baganoff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology stated, "This is extremely exciting because it's the first time we have seen our own neighborhood supermassive black hole devour a chunk of material. It's as if the material there sent us a postcard before it fell in."

Scientists were studying the galaxy's center, through dust clouds and a cluster of stars in the constellation Sagittarius. They observed the region once in September 1999 with no events being recorded, then in October 2000 the X-ray flare caught their attention.

NASA reported that the flare became 45 times brighter for approximately three hours before returning to normal levels. "The rapid rise and fall of the X-rays from this outburst are compelling evidence that the X-ray emission is coming from matter falling into a supermassive black hole, confirming that it is powered by the same accretion process as quasars and other active galactic nuclei," said Baganoff.

The scientists also commented that the research is providing the first real examination of the area surrounding the event horizon, the surface of "no return" for matter or light falling into a black hole.

"It's truly remarkable that we could identify and track this flare in such a crowded region of space," said Mark Bautz of MIT. "This discovery would not have been possible without the resolution and sensitivity of Chandra and the onboard instrument."

Scientists estimate that the black hole is 24,000 light-years away and has a mass of 3 million of our Suns stretching the same distance from the Earth to the Sun.

The Chandra Observatory was deployed from the Space Shuttle Columbia in July 1999 to observe X-rays from high energy regions of the universe transmitting high resolution images back to scientists. The orbiting observatory has an X-ray telescope and instruments that produce and analyze the images inside a spacecraft with its own propulsion system. The observatory has an ellipse-shaped orbit around the Earth then circling close to one third of the way to the Moon.