Tuesday, March 22, 2016

to see light from a black hole

Read the article at Business Insider on seeing a black hole in visible light. Well. Not seeing the black hole directly but the accretion disc surrounding a black hole. Exciting! Now, the video clip they showed I thought was a little weak; perhaps including a time-scaled plot would be helpful.

It described that in some cases, it may be possible to see rapid and pronounced changes in magnitude in a 20 centimetre telescope. All right. That puts it squarely in the grasp of amateur gear.

The piece quoted Bill Goff of the American Association of Variable Star Observers group. "Seeing changes greater than one magnitude in less than an hour... was a wonder to see. [Imagine the] eruptive changes." Indeed.

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See the published results at the Nature site. More than 2 magnitudes in red and blue, about 4 magnitudes in visual/green.

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