“Our inspections have not shown a previously cataloged object at this position in space,” said Branden Allen, a Harvard scientist and research supervisor who first discovered the source in the REXIS data.
The glow that showed up in the REXIS data turned out to be a recently flared X-ray from a black hole. The outbreak was confirmed by the Japanese MAXI telescope, as well as the NASER telescope on board the International Space Station.
Observations from all three instruments have an interesting note: while MAXI and NICER detected an outburst from low Earth orbit, REXIS detected the same activity millions of kilometers from Earth in Bennu orbit, and is the first such outburst ever detected from interplanetary space.
https://twitter.com/OSIRISREx/status/1233473865931726848?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
“Finding this X-ray burst is a moment of pride for the REXIS team. This means our instrument is performing as expected and at the level required for NASA's scientific instruments, ”said Madeleine Lambert, a graduate student at MIT, who developed the instrument command sequences that luckily discovered the black hole.
X-rays can only be observed from space, as our planet's atmosphere protects us (and instruments) on Earth from X-rays emanating from space. The X-rays detected by REXIS came when a black hole pulled material from a star orbiting it.
As matter swirls into a spinning disk that surrounds the black hole, a tremendous amount of energy is released in the process (mostly in the form of X-rays).
REXIS is the size of a shoebox and is a collaborative experiment conducted by students and researchers at MIT and Harvard who proposed, built and operated the device.
Article published by Universe Today.
Sources: Photo: NASA / Goddard / University of Arizona / MIT / Harvard
