'Closest black hole' system found to contain no black hole AandA_journal
New research using data from ESO’s Very Large Telescope and Very Large Telescope Interferometer has revealed that HR 6819, previously believed to be a triple system with a black hole, is in fact a system of two stars with no black hole. The scientists, a KU Leuven-ESO team, believe they have observed this binary system in a brief moment after one of the stars sucked the atmosphere off its companion, a phenomenon often referred to as “stellar vampirism”.
Rivinius and his colleagues were convinced that the best explanation for the data they had, obtained with the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope, was that HR 6819 was a triple system, with one star orbiting a black hole every 40 days and a second star in a much wider orbit. But a study led by Julia Bodensteiner, then a Ph.D. student at KU Leuven, Belgium,for the same data: HR 6819 could also be a system with only two stars on a 40-day orbit and no black hole at all.
"The scenarios we were looking for were rather clear, very different and easily distinguishable with the right instrument," says Rivinius."We agreed that there were two sources of light in the system, so the question was whether they orbit each other closely, as in the stripped-star scenario, or are far apart from each other, as in the black hole scenario."
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