According to a report in NBC News, Astronomers using NuSTAR spotted a rare X-ray star explosion at the center of our galaxy, The Milky Way. The NuSTAR revealed that an undefined black hole has been consuming gas from a nearby sun like star.
"Astronomers have long speculated that the black hole's snacking should produce copious hard X-rays, but NuSTAR is the first telescope with sufficient sensitivity to actually detect them," said NuSTAR team member Chuck Hailey of Columbia University in New York City.
NuSTAR is the only telescope which can provide focused images of the highest energy X-rays. It was launched June 13. The telescope allows astronomers to find a massive black hole lies at the center of our galaxy.
Other telescopes including NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, used to capture images of lower X-ray light and the W.M. Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii which allows capturing infrared images.
"We got lucky to have captured an outburst from the black hole during our observing campaign," Fiona Harrison, the mission's principal investigator at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena said. "This data will help us better understand the gentle giant at the heart of our galaxy and why it sometimes flares up for a few hours and then returns to slumber."
Stellar forensics described "crazy environment" by Jessica Lu of the University of Hawaii. Millions of years ago, the disk formation was caused when a cloud of cold molecular hydrogen fell towards the black hole. Approximately 10,000 stars were formed within the disk.
According to NBC News, Astronomers estimated the distance of the black hole to be 20,000 to 30,000 light-years away in the galaxy's inner region. They named the rare bright X-ray nova "Swift J1745-26."
"Bright X-ray novae are so rare that they're essentially once-a-mission events and this is the first one Swift has seen," Neil Gehrels, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement. "This is really something we've been waiting for."
