(Image by Bahramian et al.)
In a cluster of stars 14,800 light years away from Earth, one star is involved in the closest orbital dance with a black hole ever observed, circling the black hole twice in an hour. This could be the tightest orbital distance between a black hole and a white dwarf star in the Milky Way, with the distance between them just twice that of the Earth and the Moon. While researchers don’t believe the white dwarf’s at risk of falling into the black hole, it may be consistently losing its mass as a result of their close companionship.
Authors:
Arash Bahramian, Craig O. Heinke, Vlad Tudor, James C. A. Miller-Jones, Slavko Bogdanov, Thomas J. Maccarone, Christian Knigge, Gregory R. Sivakoff, Laura Chomiuk, Jay Strader, Javier A. Garcia, Timothy Kallman
Lead author:
Arash Bahramian, University of Alberta, and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Michigan, Email: bahramian@pa.msu.ca
Original paper published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on March 13, 2017.
