From the edge of abyss... First message received from the boundary of the black hole at the centre of our Galaxy
1er novembre 2003
An international team led by the Max Planck Institute and including two researchers of Paris Observatory, have observed in the infra-red domain luminous flashes coming from the environment of the supermassive black hole located at the center of our Galaxy. These flashes evolve very quickly in time and would come from hot gas falling into the black hole, right before its final absorption by the "monster". These results were obtained with the instrument NAOS-CONICA (NACO) installed on the Very Large Telescope of ESO and are published in the Nature of 30/10/03.
Figure 1. Within a few minutes, a luminous flash appears (here at 1.62 µm in wavelength) then disappears at the very place where is the black hole at our Galactic centre (cf also the animation mpeg, 136 kB) (S2 is the star orbiting around the black hole, which recently allowed to estimate its mass). Click on the
image to enlarge it.
Figure 2. Light curves of the luminous flash (blue colour) in the filters H (1,65 µm), K (2,2 µm), L’(3,8 µm) and from a reference star (red colour). During the une observations (top curves), a period of 16,8 +/- 2 mn is observed. Click on the image
to enlarge it.
Reference : R. Genzel, R, Shödel, T. Ott, A. Eckart, T. Alexander, F. Lacombe, D. Rouan, B. Aschenbach : "Near-IR Flares from Accreting Gas around the Supermassive Black Hole in the Galactic Center", Nature of 30 Octobre 2003 ESO Press-Release A black hole at the centre of our Galaxy Contact
Daniel Rouan (Observatoire de Paris, LESIA) François Lacombe (Observatoire de Paris, LESIA)
Dernière modification le 4 mars 2013