Last April , after having traveled halfway across the universe , a hefty shower of gamma ray was observed , allowing stargazer to see a major black hole eruption like never before .
Two teams of astronomers were able-bodied to use dissimilar instrumentality to patch together a vast amount of information about coltsfoot PKS 1441 + 25 , which is 7.6 billion light - year out . The supermassive black hole at its center has a mass of 70 million sun , with an event horizon ( the surface of no proceeds around a black hole ) with a radius of over 300 million kilometre ( 190 million miles ) .
The finding from theMAGIC teamandVERITAS teamare both published inThe Astrophysical Journal Letters .
PKS 1441 + 25 is so bright in gamma rays because it ’s a blazar : The direction of the black hole jets are aligned to our line of credit - of - great deal . Due to the favorable alignment between Earth and the galaxy , the researchers were able-bodied to discover the surprising neighborhood of the supermassive black hole .
" When we looked at all the datum from this result , from gamma ray to radio , we realized the measurements told us something we did n’t expect about how the black hole produce this vigor , " Jonathan Biteau , Colorado - author of one of the composition that reported these findings , said in astatement .
It was imagine that different regions would produce light at dissimilar energies , with the most powerful Vasco da Gamma beam of light produced very near to the event visible horizon .
" Instead , the multiwavelength video suggests that spark at all wavelengths came from a single realm located far out from the power origin , " Biteau explained .
Biteau and his team were able-bodied to make this find using the results from the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System(VERITAS ) . The other team used NASA ’s Fermi telescope and the Major Atmospheric Gamma - irradiation Imaging Cerenkov experiment(MAGIC ) , located on La Palma in the Canary Islands .
The MAGIC team was able to measure the energy of the Vasco da Gamma beam emitted and they discovered that PKS 1441 + 25 is a powerhouse . The gamma rays measured hand the high sensing limit , each photon being between 20 and 125 billion times more energetic than a re of sunlight .
" Because this galaxy is so far away , we did n’t have a strong prospect of detecting da Gamma light beam with energy this mellow , " say Josefa Becerra Gonzalez , a researcher who analyze data as part of the MAGIC study . " There are fewer and fewer gamma re at progressively gamy energies , and fewer still from very distant informant . "
