What can dormant black holes teach astronomers about tidal disruption events (TDEs), which is the bright flash observed when a black hole consumes a star that passes too close to it? This is what a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters hopes to address as a team of researchers led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) investigated TDEs occurring in dusty galaxies that are unobservable with optical telescopes. This study has the potential to help astronomers use new observational methods to better understand the nature of TDEs and the formation and evolution of black holes, specifically dormant black holes.
For the study, the researchers used NASA’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe four TDEs hiding within four dusty galaxies approximately 200 megaparsecs (652 million light-years) from Earth that can only be observed using specialized telescopic instruments. In this case, JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) Medium-Resolution Spectrometer (MRS), which observed two TDEs in optical and X-ray wavelengths, respectively, while the other two TDEs were observed in MIR. With confirmation that TDEs occurred in each galaxy, the researchers note how this underscores JWST’s ability to observe TDEs that would otherwise be obscured by the immense amount of dust and gas surrounding a galaxy, along with helping them learn more about dormant black holes that only awaken when they consume nearby stars.
“These are the first JWST observations of tidal disruption events, and they look nothing like what we’ve ever seen before,” said Megan Masterson, who is a PhD Candidate in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research and lead author of the study. “We’ve learned these are indeed powered by black hole accretion, and they don’t look like environments around normal active black holes. The fact that we’re now able to study what that dormant black hole environment actually looks like is an exciting aspect.”
What new discoveries about TDEs will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: The Astrophysical Journal Letters, EurekAlert!
Featured Image Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF/NASA
