NASA/JPL-CalTech

Astronomers have spotted a beam of light bursting out of a black hole for the first time -- a phenomenon they witnessed using a standard telescope.

Telescopes with lenses as small as 20cm, similar to those that can be used by amateur star gazers, were used by an international research team as they observed visible light emerging from a black hole for the first time. The small telescopes were used alongside more powerful versions.


The Japanese researchers detected visible light waves emerging from the V404 Cygni black hole when it became active for the first time in 2016 years in June 2015.

Blackholes, which, when active, suck in all matter surrounding them, infrequently have outbursts where huge amounts of energy are emitted from the substances that have fallen into the blackhole. This includes X-rays.

Until now astronomers have typically watched the activities of black holes through X-rays, which are generated within the black holes. "We now know that we can make observations based on optical rays -- visible light, in other words -- and that black holes can be observed without high-spec X-ray or gamma-ray telescopes," said Mariko Kimura, from Kyoto University who led the study.

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The research, which was reported in Nature, says that optical fluctuation patterns correlated with those of the X-rays.

Southampton University astronomer Poshak Gandhi told the Guardian that at the time the light was seen emitting from V404 Cygni it "would have been one of the most distant objects in the Milky Way visible in dark skies to the unaided eye".

The discovery from the worldwide team comes after separate researchers at Nasa spotted a black hole 'burping' two blasts of gas coming from a supermassive black hole. Nasa said it had found two arcs of X-rays with the Nasa Chandra X-Ray Observatory at the heart of a galaxy 26 million light years away from Earth.