Telescope captures the birth of a black hole

The University of Western Australia’s (UWA) Zadko Telescope has captured the explosion that gave birth to a black hole 12 billion light years away, which took place before the Earth and Sun existed.

The explosion was recorded at 10.49 pm on 2 February, when a NASA satellite orbiting the Earth sent an alert to the Zadko Telescope. Within seconds of NASA detecting the explosion, Zadko began taking very sensitive images of the sky.

“Over several minutes we saw a rapidly brightening star, where there was no star before,” said Associate Professor David Coward, UWA Zadko science director.

“The light from the explosion had travelled for 12 billion years before hitting the telescope.”

The event, named GRB170205, was monitored by Zadko for more than 24 hours, during which it provided one of the most detailed recordings of a massive star exploding. The images — which reveal a blast equivalent to a billion suns shining together for one minute — will will be used to test the ‘fireball model’, which so far is the only feasible description in the world of how these explosions occur.

The discovery comes just a few months after Zadko was used by an international team to reconstruct the shape of a ‘Barbarian’ asteroid — an extremely rare and ancient space rock that was present before the Earth was created.

Associate Professor Coward said space rocks were the foundation for planet formation and ultimately the start of life. The shape of asteroids is important because it is like a fossil record of the environment when they first formed.

“Like a time machine, being able to reconstruct their shape and properties helps us go back in time to better understand our beginnings,” he said.

Associate Professor Coward said Barbarians are usually too far away to be observed by telescopes, with only 13 of the objects having ever been discovered.

“To get around this, 16 telescopes involved in the study were used to detect tiny changes in light intensity to reconstruct the shape of the Barbarian from the light pattern using powerful computers,” he said.

“The Zadko telescope was critical in determining the shape of the asteroid because it provided critical data only available from Western Australia.”