Mar 13, 2017This particular source, known as X9, has been of interest to scientists for many years.
Until a couple of years ago, astronomers thought X9 ,Mar 13, 2017Until a couple of years ago, astronomers thought X9 contained a white dwarf pulling material from a companion star like the Sun.
(Astronomers ,Astronomers found that the white dwarf in X9 completes one orbit around the black hole in less than a half an hour.
They estimate the white dwarf and black hole are separated by about 2.5 times the distance between the Earth and Moon — an extraordinarily small span in cosmic terms.,Astronomers found this extraordinarily close stellar pairing in the globular cluster named 47 Tucanae, a dense collection of stars located on the outskirts of the Milky Way galaxy, about 14,800 light years from Earth.
This particular source, known as X9, has been of interest to scientists for many years.,Astronomers found this extraordinarily close stellar pairing in the globular cluster named 47 Tucanae, a dense collection of stars located on the outskirts of the Milky Way galaxy, about 14,800 light years from Earth.
This particular source, known as X9, has been of interest to scientists for many years.,The X9 system is located in 47 Tucanae, a dense star cluster in the outskirts of the Milky Way.
Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory along with data from other telescopes, researchers determined that the white dwarf makes one complete orbit around the black hole in less than a half an hour.,The X9 system is located in 47 Tucanae, a dense star cluster in the outskirts of the Milky Way.
Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory along with data from other telescopes, researchers determined that the white dwarf makes one complete orbit around the black hole in less than a half an hour.,While scientists have found this configuration many times before, this binary, known as X9, is special.
That's because it has the closest orbit ever seen between a black hole and a companion star.
The X9 system is located in 47 Tucanae, a dense star cluster in the outskirts of the Milky Way.