{"id":14409,"date":"2014-11-04T01:00:30","date_gmt":"2014-11-04T11:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?p=14409"},"modified":"2014-11-03T11:11:17","modified_gmt":"2014-11-03T21:11:17","slug":"mysterious-g2-cloud-near-black-hole-identified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?p=14409","title":{"rendered":"Mysterious G2 Cloud Near Black Hole Identified"},"content":{"rendered":"

W. M. Keck Observatory press release<\/a>…<\/p>\n

The mystery about a thin, bizarre object in the center of the Milky Way headed toward our galaxy\u2019s enormous black hole has been solved by UCLA astronomers using the W. M. Keck Observatory, home of the two largest telescopes on Earth. The scientists studied the object, known as G2, during its closest approach to the black hole this summer, and found the black hole did not dine on it. The research is published today in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.<\/p>\n

\"G2<\/a>
An image from W. M. Keck Observatory near infrared data shows that G2 survived its closest approach to the black hole. Credit Andrea Ghez\/Gunther Witzel\/UCLA Galactic Center Group\/W. M. Keck Observatory<\/figcaption><\/figure>While some scientists believed the object was a cloud of hydrogen gas that would be torn apart in a fiery show, Ghez and her team proved it was much more interesting.<\/p>\n

\u201cG2 survived and continues happily on its orbit; a gas cloud would not do that,\u201d said Andrea Ghez, UCLA professor of physics and astronomy who holds the Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Chair in Astrophysics, and directs the UCLA Galactic Center Group. \u201cG2 was completely unaffected by the black hole; no fireworks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, the team has demonstrated it is a pair of binary stars that had been orbiting the black hole in tandem and merged together into an extremely large star, cloaked in gas and dust, and choreographed by the black hole\u2019s powerful gravitational field.<\/p>\n

\u201cG2 is not alone,\u201d said Ghez, who uses Keck Observatory to study thousands of stars in the neighborhood of the supermassive black hole. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing a new class of stars near the black hole, and as a consequence of the black hole.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ghez and her colleagues \u2014 who include lead author Gunther Witzel, a UCLA postdoctoral scholar in Ghez\u2019s research group, and Mark Morris, a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy \u2014 studied the event with both of the 10-meter telescopes at Keck Observatory.<\/p>\n

Keck Observatory employs a powerful technology called adaptive optics, which Ghez helped to pioneer, to correct the distorting effects of the Earth’s atmosphere in real time, and to reveal the region of space around the black hole. With adaptive optics, Ghez and her colleagues have revealed many surprises about the environments surrounding supermassive black holes, discovering, for example, young stars where none were expected and seeing a lack of old stars where many were anticipated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Keck Observatory has been the leader in adaptive optics for more than a decade and has enabled us to achieve tremendous progress in correcting the distorting effects of the Earth\u2019s atmosphere using high\u2013angular resolution imaging techniques,\u201d Ghez said.<\/p>\n

The researchers wouldn\u2019t have been able to arrive at their conclusions without the Keck\u2019s advanced technology. \u201cIt is a result that in its precision was possible only with these incredible tools, the Keck Observatory\u2019s 10-meter telescopes,\u201d Witzel said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are seeing phenomena about black holes that you can\u2019t watch anywhere else in the universe,\u201d Ghez added. \u201cWe are starting to understand the physics of black holes in a way that has never been possible before, and is possible only at the center of the galaxy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Massive stars in our galaxy, she noted, primarily come in pairs. When the two stars merge into one, the star expands for more than 10,000 years \u201cbefore it settles back down,\u201d Ghez said. \u201cThis may be happening more than we thought; the stars at the center of the galaxy are massive and mostly binaries. It\u2019s possible that many of the stars we\u2019ve been watching and not understanding may be the end product of a merger that are calm now.\u201d<\/p>\n

G2, in that explosive stage now, has been an object of fascination. \u201cIts closest approach to the black hole was one of the most watched events in astronomy in my career,\u201d Ghez said.<\/p>\n

G2 makes an unusual, 300-year elliptical orbit around the black hole and Ghez\u2019s group calculated its closest approach occurred this summer \u2014 later than other astronomers believed \u2014and they were in place at Keck Observatory to gather the data.<\/p>\n

Black holes, which form out of the collapse of matter, have such high density that nothing can escape their gravitational pull, not even light. They cannot be seen directly, but their influence on nearby stars is visible and provides a signature, said Ghez, a 2008 MacArthur Fellow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

W. M. Keck Observatory press release… The mystery about a thin, bizarre object in the center of the Milky Way headed toward our galaxy\u2019s enormous black hole has been solved by UCLA astronomers using the W. M. Keck Observatory, home of the two largest telescopes on Earth. The scientists studied the object, known as G2, … Continue reading “Mysterious G2 Cloud Near Black Hole Identified”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[146,655,141,50,361],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14409"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14409"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14416,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14409\/revisions\/14416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}