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At least, it was lost by the leading astronomers of the Earth. Star N6946-BH1, which is a red supergiant, which at the time of its detection was approximately 25 times more massive than our sun, suddenly … disappeared.
The mysterious luminary is at a distance of 22 million light years from the solar system – long known to astronomers spiral galaxy NGC 6946. Observations of the red supergiants have been underway for a long time, recently – with the help of Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) and two Space – Spitzer and Hubble.
According to NASA, in 2007, astronomers of the world recorded on N6946-BH1 bright flash that most often precedes rebirth luminaries into a supernova, so experts immediately talked about the upcoming explosion of the red giant. However in subsequent years N6946-BH1 pleased scientists only one more a flash of 2009, and then a star, to the astonishment of astronomers, simply began to disappear, and so rapidly that today from her only a weak source of infrared radiation remained.
Scientists do not exactly know the reason for such self-destruction N6946-BH1, but suggest that this may be the star’s gravitational collapse – turning it into a black hole. If this is true, then we can assume that astronomers of the Earth for the first time witnessed the appearance of a new black hole in the universe.
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Universe
