V404 Cygni Black Hole Active After 26 Year Hiatus

V404 Cygni Black Hole

Since the 15th of June 2015, scientists around the world have been observing a fairly massive light show, which turns out to be the awakening of a black hole roughly 37-56 miles (30-90 km) in diameter and 8000 light years away in the Cygnus constellation, which is located in the Milky Way. Now 37-56 miles might not seem like much, but with a mass 10 to 15 times that of our sun and the ability to eat stars, size becomes irrelevant. I mean you wouldn’t pick a fight with Galactus.

More or less dormant since 1989 our own local boy, the V404 Cygni black hole, has woken up, and is devouring everything in its path.

No…no, wait. It’s just eating its neighbouring star. Just like that time you woke up at 3am after that party and had that 3-day-old chow mein even though you saw the cat eating it too.

Sick, dude. Sick.

For the past week the European Space Agency (ESA) has been observing the system, which comprises of a black hole and a star. These celestial bodies orbit each other once every 6.5 days, which is a fairly close proximity. Material flows from the star to the black hole, where it gathers into a disk and heats up, eventually becoming bright enough to be visible at optical, ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths as it crosses the event horizon and plunges into the black hole. It is at these times where the system becomes the brightest thing in the sky visible through all wavelengths, outshining even the Crab Nebula.

The interesting thing about V404 is the ‘V’ in its name. This indicates that it’s a variable star, meaning its brightness isn’t constant. It’s also known as a soft X-ray transient, because every so often it gives off short bursts of X-rays. And to top it off it’s known as a nova because on at least three occasions in the 20th century it has produced bright outbursts of energy.

NASA was the first to monitor this renewed zest for life with its Swift satellite, detecting a burst of gamma rays. Soon after that MAXI (Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image), a part of the Japanese Experiment Module on the International Space Station, detected an X-ray flare from the same location. The ESA followed suit on the 17th of June with their gamma-ray observatory.

Erik Kuulkers, Integral project scientist at ESA (European Space Agency) commented that “the behaviour of this source is extraordinary at the moment, with repeated bright flashes of light on time scales shorter than an hour, something rarely seen in other black hole systems.”

The last time V404 was this active was 26 years ago where Ginga, a Japanese X-ray satellite observed it from the Mir space station. Some of the scientists observing it now weren’t even in their science-shorts at that time, while for the more wizened astronomer this probably feels like an old friend dropping by after a quarter-century holiday. Lovely.

Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site. We cover gaming news, movie reviews, wrestling and much more.