Hello All!   
      
   The Diner at the Center of the Galaxy        
      
   Nov. 22, 2012:  Deep in the heart of the spiral Milky Way galaxy, a hot vortex   
   of matter swirls around a black hole more than a million times as massive as   
   the sun.  Many galaxies, perhaps all, contain such a "monster in the middle."   
   These supermassive black holes sustain themselves by swallowing stars,   
   planets, asteroids, comets and clouds of gas that wander by the crowded   
   galactic core.    
      
   NASA's NuSTAR spacecraft recently caught the Milky Way's central black hole in   
   the act of having a snack.    
      
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP7ig8Gxftw   
       
   A new ScienceCast video explores the Milky Way's central black hole. Play it   
   "We got lucky and captured an outburst from the black hole during our [first]   
   observing campaign," says Fiona Harrison, the mission's principal investigator   
   at the California Institute of Technology.    
      
   NuSTAR is an orbiting observatory designed to take pictures of violent,   
   high-energy phenomena in the universe.  Launched on June 13, 2012, it is the   
   only telescope capable of producing focused images of the highest-energy   
   X-rays produced by dying stars and ravenous black holes.    
      
   "It's like putting on a new pair of glasses and seeing aspects of the world   
   around us clearly for the first time," says Harrison.  NuSTAR's first light   
   image of Cygnus X-1, a black hole in our galaxy that is siphoning gas off a   
   giant-star companion, shows what she's talking about: click here   
      
   NuSTAR's sharp vision allowed it to pinpoint a burst of hard X-rays coming   
   from the galactic center during an observing campaign in July.  Lower-energy   
   X-ray observations by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and infrared data from   
   the Keck telescope in Hawaii confirmed the outburst.  The Milky Way's black   
   hole had just swallowed ... something.    
      
   Black hole snacks are a violent process in which the "meal" is ripped apart by   
   powerful tides and heated to  millions of degrees as it slides down the gullet   
   of the gravitational singularity.   In this case, NuSTAR picked up X-rays   
   emitted by matter being heated up to about 100 million degrees Celsius.    
      
   http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/nustar/main/index.html   
      
   An artist's concept of NuSTAR in Earth orbit. MoreThe observation raises hopes   
   that astronomers will be able to solve a long-standing mystery:  Why is the   
   Milky Way's supermassive black hole such a picky eater?    
      
   Compared to giant black holes at the centers of other galaxies, the Milky   
   Way's is relatively quiet. More active black holes tend to gobble up matter in   
   prodigious quantities. Ours, on the other hand, is thought only to nibble or   
   not eat at all.    
      
   Asteroids could be a primary food source. One model holds that trillions of   
   asteroids surround the Milky Way's core. Astronomers using the Chandra X-ray   
   Observatory have indeed detected flares consistent with asteroids 10 km wide   
   or larger falling into the black hole.  These space rocks would be about the   
   same size as the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth 65 million   
   years ago.  Smaller space rocks might be falling in, too, but their flares   
   would be too weak for Chandra to detect.    
      
   NuSTAR brings something new to the problem. With its unprecedented ability to   
   detect and make focused images of X-ray flares, the telescope will almost   
   certainly help astronomers understand what's happening deep in the core of our   
   galaxy.  The monster's menu might soon be revealed.    
      
   For more information about NuSTAR and its focused observations of black holes,   
   visit the mission's home page at nustar.caltech.edu.    
      
      
   Author: Dr. Tony Phillips| Production editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit:   
   Science@NASA   
      
      
   Regards,   
      
   Roger    
   --- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+   
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