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ToNoAvaiL Astronomy Podcast

Check out my patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/THEINFINITECOSMOS?utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator Contact me at: [e-mail] For questions, ideas, anything you need, thank you all for your support! In the constellation Taurus, there is a cluster of a few hundred stars known as the Hyades. The cluster is just 150 light-years away, and it could be harboring a stellar-mass black hole. The idea of black holes lurking in star clusters is not new. Clusters often have large, bright stars that will eventually become neutron stars or black holes, so it is probable that earlier stars have already taken that path. The problem is proving it. Unless a black hole is actively consuming nearby material, it will be dark and difficult to see among a cluster of bright stars. So astronomers must use indirect observations to uncover the black hole. To look for black holes, the team compared observations of the Hyades cluster by the Gaia Spacecraft with N-body computer simulations. The Hyades is an open cluster of stars, so it is only loosely gravitationally bound. Occasionally, a close encounter between two stars will toss one of them out of the cluster. Other close encounters will push a star more toward the center of the cluster, making it more strongly bound to the cluster. All of this contributes to how the density of stars within the cluster varies by distance from its center. My patreon page: In the constellation Taurus, there is a cluster of a few hundred stars known as the Hyades. The cluster is just 150 light-years away, and it could be harboring a stellar-mass black hole. The idea of black holes lurking in star clusters is not new. Clusters often have large, bright stars that will eventually become neutron stars or black holes, so it is probable that earlier stars have already taken that path. The problem is proving it. Unless a black hole is actively consuming nearby material, it will be dark and difficult to see among a cluster of bright stars. So astronomers must use indirect observations to uncover the black hole. To look for black holes, the team compared observations of the Hyades cluster by the Gaia Spacecraft with N-body computer simulations. The Hyades is an open cluster of stars, so it is only loosely gravitationally bound. Occasionally, a close encounter between two stars will toss one of them out of the cluster. Other close encounters will push a star more toward the center of the cluster, making it more strongly bound to the cluster. All of this contributes to how the density of stars within the cluster varies by distance from its center. Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/THEINFINITECOSMOS?utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator