A black hole with a mass of 10 million suns



Last year, from a relatively safe location here on Earth, scientists watched a black hole swallow a star. That star, as it was succumbing to the appetites of the singularity that consumed it, sent out a kind of distress flare -- which the astronomers observed and named Swift J1644+57. (The name both recognizes the particular observatory that spotted it -- one outfitted with a specialized "Burst Alert Telescope" -- and provides the galaxy's celestial coordinates in Draco, its constellation.)

The scene that played out at that fateful moment offered not just an explosive cosmic drama, but also a wealth of information for scientists who study the stars. Because when a star is consumed by a black hole, some of its remains -- as depicted in the artist's rendering above -- emit x-rays. And measuring those rays can, in turn, provide us with clues about the mass of the black hole that tried to make a meal of them.

So when it came to Swift J1644+57's mass of matter -- given, you know, its voracious consumption of stars -- researchers wanted to know: How much does the black hole weigh? Or, this being space: What is the black hole's mass?