NASA monitors rare black hole 'eruption'

NASA is monitoring a newly awakened black hole after it released a blast of high-energy light.

The explosion was detected by NASA’s Swift satellite on June 15, and originated from V404 Cygni, a binary system at least 8,000 light-years away from Earth.

"Relative to the lifetime of space observatories, these black hole eruptions are quite rare," said the Swift's principal investigator Neil Gehrels.

"So when we see one of them flare up, we try to throw everything we have at it, monitoring across the spectrum, from radio waves to gamma rays."

The blast was triggered when gas siphoned off a neighbouring star by the black hole became super-heated, releasing a stream of X-rays.

The gas, which until recently had been forming a disk around the black hole, reached critical mass, rushing towards the centre in a flood of light.

The V404 Cyngi star system has flared up a number of times since the eruption first began.

"It repeatedly becomes the brightest object in the X-ray sky—up to 50 times brighter than the Crab Nebula, which is normally one of the brightest sources," European Space Agency project scientist Erik Kuulkers said.

"It is definitely a 'once in a professional lifetime' opportunity."