{"id":62774,"date":"2017-07-26T08:59:15","date_gmt":"2017-07-26T18:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=62774"},"modified":"2019-07-22T14:05:15","modified_gmt":"2019-07-23T00:05:15","slug":"hilo-alumni-contribute-to-black-hole-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2017\/07\/26\/hilo-alumni-contribute-to-black-hole-discovery\/","title":{"rendered":"UH<\/abbr> Hilo alumni contribute to black hole discovery in the Milky Way"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>
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Illustration of stray black holes floating around a supermassive black hole at the Galactic center.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A research team led by Japanese astronomers using data taken with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope<\/a> (JCMT), have conducted detailed radio spectral observations of molecular gas around the nucleus of our Milky Way Galaxy. The team of researchers theorize that Stellar Mass Black Holes are causing two compact gas clouds towards the center of the Milky way to exhibit some highly unusual motions. The observations were taken over a period of months by telescope operators working for JCMT<\/abbr>, which include University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> alumni Callie Matulonis<\/strong>, Kevin Silva<\/strong> and Will Montgomerie<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

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James Clerk Maxwell Telescope<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These observations are particularly important due to the nature of these black holes. Despite being so abundant in our Galaxy—astronomers believe there may be well over 100 million stellar mass black holes in our own Galaxy—only 60 or so have been observed to date. Typically detections are made using x-rays; these observations only see the more “active” black holes, e.g. those in the process of consuming a nearby stellar neighbor. Being much smaller than the Super Massive Black Hole at the center of the Milky Way, which is about a million time more massive, makes these black holes harder to detect.<\/p>\n

Japanese team member Shunya Takekawa said, “We expect that the number of black hole candidates will dramatically increase by applying research methods similar to this work.”<\/p>\n

Learn more about the discovery<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More about the JCMT<\/abbr> UH<\/abbr> alumni<\/h2>\n

Matulonis, received her bachelors in natural science and communications from UH<\/abbr> Hilo<\/a> and her master\u2019s in educational technology from UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa<\/a>. She has worked on Maunakea for nearly 13 years fulfilling a variety of positions at several telescopes.<\/p>\n

Silva received a BS<\/abbr> in astronomy and BA<\/abbr> in physics from UH<\/abbr> Hilo. He spends more than 120 days a year atop Mauna Kea observing the night sky as a JCMT<\/abbr> as a telescope system specialist.<\/p>\n

Montgomerie earned a BS<\/abbr> in astronomy, BA<\/abbr> in physics from UH<\/abbr> Hilo. He is an avid photographer and has produced time lapses of the sky from Maunakea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Observations used in the study were taken over a period of months by telescope operators Callie Matulonis, Kevin Silva and Will Montgomerie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":62768,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[34,1164,14,9],"class_list":["post-62774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","tag-astronomy","tag-telescope","tag-uh-hilo","tag-uh-manoa","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/jcmt-stray-black-holes.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62774"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100253,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62774\/revisions\/100253"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}