Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) | 2018 Oct 19
wrote: Researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) have thought out a strategy which could lead to a triplication in the number of known stellar mass black holes.
A stellar mass black hole is a compact object with a mass greater than 3 solar masses. It is so dense and has such a powerful force of attraction that not even light can escape from it. That is why it cannot be observed directly, but only via the effects in produces, in the present case on its companion star, from which it “feeds”. In general when matter falls onto a black hole is does so “quietly” by way of an accretion disc. However there are periods when this in fall is violent, and “bursty”, producing a strong outburst of X-ray brightness.
Binary systems composed of a star donating mass to a black hole are essential laboratories for the understanding of the most extreme physical phenomena in the universe. , such as those which, towards the end of the life of a massive star lead to the formation of the black hole itself, or to a neutron star. Until now some 60 candidates for this type of black holes have been found in our Galaxy, thanks to the detection of transient eruptions of X-rays, but only 17 of these have been confirmed. This is because of the difficulties in the way of studying the motion of the companion star round the black hole, which would allow us to infer its mass, and confirm the type of object.
Researchers have only a limited knowledge of the formation and the evolution of this type of objects, because of the small number of known binaries containing a black hole. That is why it is important to develop new strategies which will let us discover the “hidden”· population of the Galaxy, that is those objects which are “hibernating” , not in an active phase, and so are not emitting X-rays. ...
A Feasibility Study on the Photometric Detection of Quiescent Black Hole X-ray Binaries ~ Jorge Casares, Manuel A.P. Torres
- Monthly Notices of the RAS 481(4):4372 (Dec 2018) DOI: 10.1093/mnras/sty2570
arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1809.07330 > 19 Sep 2018 (v1), 01 Oct 2018 (v2)
- Monthly Notices of the RAS 473(4):5195 (Feb 2018) DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stx2690
arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1711.03553 > 09 Nov 2017