Our Galaxy’s Black Hole Mysteriously Flared Up, Almost 75 Times Brighter And Nobody Knows Why

• Milky Way’s Black Hole Just Flared, Growing 75 Times as Bright for a Few Hours
  by EVAN GOUGH, AUGUST 13, 2019 , https://www.universetoday.com/
  Even though the black hole at the center of the Milky Way is a monster, it’s still rather quiet. Called Sagittarius A*, it’s about 4.6 million times more massive than our Sun. Usually, it’s a brooding behemoth. But scientists observing Sgr. A* with the Keck Telescope just watched as its brightness bloomed to over 75 times normal for a few hours.
  –
  The flaring is not visible in optical light. It’s all happening in the near-infrared, the portion of the infrared spectrum closest to optical light. Astronomers have been watching Sgr. A* for 20 years, and though the black hole does have some variability in its output, this 75 times normal flaring event is like nothing astronomers have observed before. This peak was over twice as bright as the previous peak flux level.
  –
  These results are being reported in the Astrophysical Journal Letters in a paper titled “Unprecedented variability of Sgr A* in NIR“, and is available at the pre-press site arXiv.org. The lead author is Tuan Do, an astronomer at UCLA.
  –
  read more.
  –
• Our Galaxy’s Supermassive Black Hole Has Emitted a Mysteriously Bright Flare
  by MICHELLE STARR, 12 AUG 2019, https://www.sciencealert.com/
  The supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*, is relatively quiet. It’s not an active nucleus, spewing light and heat into the space around it; most of the time, the black hole’s activity is low key, with minimal fluctuations in its brightness.
  –
  Most of the time. Recently, astronomers caught it going absolutely bananas, suddenly growing 75 times brighter before subsiding back to normal levels. That’s the brightest we’ve ever seen Sgr A* in near-infrared wavelengths. “I was pretty surprised at first and then very excited,” astronomer Tuan Do of the University of California Los Angeles told ScienceAlert.
  –
  “The black hole was so bright I at first mistook it for the star S0-2, because I had never seen Sgr A* that bright. Over the next few frames, though, it was clear the source was variable and had to be the black hole. I knew almost right away there was probably something interesting going on with the black hole.”
  –
  read more.

end