| Observation data Epoch J2000 Equinox J2000 | |
|---|---|
| Constellation | Scorpius |
| Right ascension | 17h 09m 08.0s [1] |
| Declination | −36° 24′ 24″ [1] |
| Other designations | |
SWIFT J1709.8-3627B, INTEGRAL1 44, CXOU J170907.6-362425 | |
| Database references | |
| SIMBAD | data |
IGR J17091-3624 (also IGR J17091) is a stellar mass black hole 28,000 light-years away. It lies in the constellation Scorpius in the Milky Way galaxy. [2]
IGR J17091 was discovered by ESA's INTEGRAL satellite in April 2003. [3]
IGR J17091 is a stellar mass black hole with a mass between 3 and 10 M☉. It is a binary system in which a star orbits the black hole. [4] Its small size may make it a candidate for the smallest black hole discovered. [5] However, as of 2017 its mass was described as "unknown". [6]
Observations by the Chandra X-ray Observatory in 2011 discovered that it produces the fastest winds ever coming from an accretion disk at 3,218,688 km/h (20 million mph) making it about 3% of the speed of light. This is 10 times faster than the next-highest-measured wind speed. According to Ashley King from the University of Michigan "Contrary to the popular perception of black holes pulling in all of the material that gets close, we estimate up to 95 percent of the matter in the disk around IGR J17091 is expelled by the wind." [7]
IGR J17091 also exhibits peculiar X-ray variability patterns or "heartbeats" which are small, quasi-periodic, outbursts repeated over a 5- to 70-second timescale. [8] Similar variability has only been observed in the black hole GRS 1915+105; however, IGR J17091's outbursts are 20 times fainter. [9]
X-ray binaries are a class of binary stars that are luminous in X-rays. The X-rays are produced by matter falling from one component, called the donor, to the other component, called the accretor, which is very compact: a neutron star or black hole. The infalling matter releases gravitational potential energy, up to several tenths of its rest mass, as X-rays. The lifetime and the mass-transfer rate in an X-ray binary depends on the evolutionary status of the donor star, the mass ratio between the stellar components, and their orbital separation.
A supermassive black hole is the largest type of black hole, with its mass being on the order of hundreds of thousands, or millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun (M☉). Black holes are a class of astronomical objects that have undergone gravitational collapse, leaving behind spheroidal regions of space from which nothing can escape, not even light. Observational evidence indicates that almost every large galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center. For example, the Milky Way has a supermassive black hole in its Galactic Center, corresponding to the radio source Sagittarius A*. Accretion of interstellar gas onto supermassive black holes is the process responsible for powering active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and quasars.
An intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) is a class of black hole with mass in the range 102–105 solar masses: significantly more than stellar black holes but less than the 105–109 solar mass supermassive black holes. Several IMBH candidate objects have been discovered in our galaxy and others nearby, based on indirect gas cloud velocity and accretion disk spectra observations of various evidentiary strength.
Sagittarius A*, abbreviated Sgr A*, is the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Center of the Milky Way. It is located near the border of the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpius, about 5.6° south of the ecliptic, visually close to the Butterfly Cluster (M6) and Lambda Scorpii.
Messier 32 is a dwarf "early-type" galaxy about 2,650,000 light-years (810,000 pc) from the Solar System, appearing in the constellation Andromeda. M32 is a satellite galaxy of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and was discovered by Guillaume Le Gentil in 1749.
An astrophysical jet is an astronomical phenomenon where outflows of ionised matter are emitted as extended beams along the axis of rotation. When this greatly accelerated matter in the beam approaches the speed of light, astrophysical jets become relativistic jets as they show effects from special relativity.
Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics (MOA) is a collaborative project between researchers in New Zealand and Japan, led by Professor Yasushi Muraki of Nagoya University. They use microlensing to observe dark matter, extra-solar planets, and stellar atmospheres from the Southern Hemisphere. The group concentrates especially on the detection and observation of gravitational microlensing events of high magnification, of order 100 or more, as these provide the greatest sensitivity to extrasolar planets. They work with other groups in Australia, the United States and elsewhere. Observations are conducted at New Zealand's Mt. John University Observatory using a 1.8 m (70.9 in) reflector telescope built for the project.
The Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit is an upper bound to the mass of cold, non-rotating neutron stars, analogous to the Chandrasekhar limit for white dwarf stars. If the mass of a neutron star reaches the limit it will collapse to a denser form, most likely a black hole.
GRS 1915+105 or V1487 Aquilae is an X-ray binary star system which features a regular star and a black hole. It was discovered on August 15, 1992 by the WATCH all-sky monitor aboard Granat. "GRS" stands for "GRANAT source", "1915" is the right ascension and "105" reflects the approximate declination. The near-infrared counterpart was confirmed by spectroscopic observations. The binary system lies 11,000 parsecs away in Aquila. GRS 1915+105 is the heaviest of the stellar black holes so far known in the Milky Way Galaxy, with 10 to 18 times the mass of the Sun. It is also a microquasar, and it appears that the black hole rotates at least 950 times per second, close to the maximum of 1,150 times per second, with a spin parameter value between 0.82 and 1.00.
GRO J0422+32 is an X-ray nova and black hole candidate that was discovered by the BATSE instrument on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory satellite on 5 August 1992. During outburst, it was observed to be stronger than the Crab Nebula gamma-ray source out to photon energies of about 500 keV.
V404 Cygni is a microquasar and a binary system in the constellation of Cygnus. It contains a black hole with a mass of about 9 M☉ and an early K giant star companion with a mass slightly smaller than the Sun. The star and the black hole orbit each other every 6.47129 days at fairly close range. Due to their proximity and the intense gravity of the black hole, the companion star loses mass to an accretion disk around the black hole and ultimately to the black hole itself.
Strategic Explorations of Exoplanets and Disks with Subaru (SEEDS) is a multi-year survey that used the Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii in an effort to directly image extrasolar planets and protoplanetary/debris disks around hundreds of nearby stars. SEEDS is a Japanese-led international project. It consists of some 120 researchers from a number of institutions in Japan, the U.S. and the EU. The survey's headquarters is at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) and led by Principal Investigator Motohide Tamura. The goals of the survey are to address the following key issues in the study of extrasolar planets and disks: the detection and census of exoplanets in the regions around solar-mass and massive stars; the evolution of protoplanetary disks and debris disks; and the link between exoplanets and circumstellar disks.
Hyper-Luminous X-ray source 1, commonly known as HLX-1, is an intermediate-mass black hole candidate located in the lenticular galaxy ESO 243-49 about 290 million light-years from Earth. The source was discovered at the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, Toulouse, France and gained interest from the scientific community because of strong evidence supporting it as an intermediate-mass black hole. HLX-1 is possibly the remnant of a dwarf galaxy that may have been in a galactic collision with ESO 243-49.
WR 147 is a multiple star system in the constellation of Cygnus. The system is extremely reddened by interstellar extinction - that is, dust in front of the star scatters much of the blue light coming from WR 147, leaving the star appearing reddish.
M60-UCD1 is an ultracompact dwarf galaxy. It is 54 million light years from Earth, close to Messier 60 in the Virgo Cluster. Half of its stellar mass is in the central sphere 160 light years in diameter.
IGR J11014−6103, also called the Lighthouse Nebula, is a pulsar wind nebula trailing the neutron star which has the longest relativistic jet observed in the Milky Way.
Triangulum II is a dwarf galaxy close to the Milky Way Galaxy. Like other dwarf spheroidal galaxies, its stellar population is very old: the galaxy was quenched before 11.5 billion years ago. It contains only 1000 stars, yet is quite massive, having a solar mass to light ratio of 3600. This is an unusually high mass for such a small galaxy.
A hypernova is a very energetic supernova thought to result from an extreme core-collapse scenario. In this case, a massive star collapses to form a rotating black hole emitting twin energetic jets and surrounded by an accretion disk. It is a type of stellar explosion that ejects material with an unusually high kinetic energy, an order of magnitude higher than most supernovae, with a luminosity at least 10 times greater. They usually appear similar to a type Ic supernova, but with unusually broad spectral lines indicating an extremely high expansion velocity. Hypernovae are one of the mechanisms for producing long gamma ray bursts (GRBs), which range from 2 seconds to over a minute in duration. They have also been referred to as superluminous supernovae, though that classification also includes other types of extremely luminous stellar explosions that have different origins.
