Astronomers have witnessed the rare event of a black hole waking up from a decades-long slumber to feed on a planet-sized object in a galaxy 47 million light years away.
The observation, made using the European Space Agency's Integral satellite project, is outlined today in a paper published in the Astronomy and Astrophysics journal.
"The observation was completely unexpected, from a galaxy that has been quiet for at least 20-30 years," lead author Marek Nikolajuk of Poland's University of Bialystok says.
It also comes as astronomers wait on a similar feeding event, albeit on a gas cloud, that is expected to soon happen at the black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way Galaxy.
The observation revealed a black hole that had been slumbering for years chomping on a giant, low-mass object that had come too close.
Scientists from the University of Geneva analysing the data collected by Integral, spotted a light flare coming from a black hole in the centre of the NGC 4845 galaxy, which has a mass more than 300,000 greater than the Sun and had been dormant for more than 30 years.
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