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Click the image for a detailed AAVSO finder chart. You can spot it in a 10-inch or larger scope in Cancer not far from the Beehive Cluster. OJ 287 has been fluctuating around 13.5-140 magnitude lately. Based on Valtonen’s model, the team predicted a flare in late November 2015, and it happened right on schedule. After carefully observing eight outbursts of the black hole, the team was able to determine not only the black holes’ masses but also the precession rate of the orbit.
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This changes when and where the smaller black hole passes through the accretion disk. The orbit of the smaller black hole also precesses similar to how Mercury’s orbit precesses. This heated material flows out from both sides of the accretion disk and radiates strongly for weeks, causing the double peak in brightness. The smaller black hole passes through the larger’s the accretion disk during its orbit, causing the disk material to briefly heat up to very high temperatures. OJ 287 is visible due to the streaming of matter present in the accretion disk onto the largest black hole. Mauri Valtonen of the University of Turku (Finland) and colleagues developed a model that beautifully explains the data if the quasar OJ 287 harbors not one buy two unequal mass black holes - an 18 billion mass one orbited by a smaller black hole. Illustration of a gradually precessing orbit similar to the precessing orbit of the smaller smaller black hole orbiting the larger in OJ 287. A close inspection of newer data sets reveals the presence of double-peaks in these outbursts. Credit: NASA/ESAĪ recent observational campaign involving more than two dozen optical telescopes and NASA’s space based SWIFT X-ray telescope allowed a team of astronomers to measure very accurately the rotational rate the black hole powering OJ 287 at one third the maximum spin rate - about 56,000 miles per second (90,000 kps) - allowed in General Relativity A careful analysis of these observations show that OJ 287 has produced close-to-periodic optical outbursts at intervals of approximately 12 years dating back to around 1891. Long exposures made with the Hubble Space Telescope showing brilliant quasars flaring in the hearts of six distant galaxies. Variability of the light streaming from the heart of a blazar is so constant, the object practically flickers. And if we’re so privileged that one of those jet happens to point directly at us, we call the quasar a “blazar”. Credit: University of TurkuĪs matter gets sucked down the hole, jets of hot plasma and energetic light shoot out perpendicular to the disk. The predictions of the model are verified by observations. When it intersects the larger’s disk coming and going, astronomers see a pair of bright flares. A second, smaller black hole is believed to orbit the larger. An illustration of the binary black hole system, OJ 287, showing the massive black hole surrounded by an accretion disk. If we could pull up for a closer look, we’d see a brilliant, flattened accretion disk composed of heated star-stuff spinning about the central black hole at extreme speeds.
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Quasars or quasi-stellar objects light up the centers of many remote galaxies. When one of the jets happens to be aimed in the direction of Earth, as illustrated here, the galaxy appears especially bright and is classified as a blazar.Īstronomers know the object as OJ 287, a quasar that lies 3.5 billion light years from Earth. As matter falls toward the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center, some of it is accelerated outward at nearly the speed of light along jets pointed in opposite directions. Artist’s view of a black hole-powered blazar (a type of quasar) lighting up the center of a remote galaxy. If you saw it, you might sniff at something so insignificant, yet it represents the final farewell of chewed up stars as their remains whirl down the throat of an 18 billion solar mass black hole, one of the most massive known in the universe. Way up in the constellation Cancer there’s a 14th magnitude speck of light you can claim in a 10-inch or larger telescope.