Black hole, with mass of six Suns, is devouring a giant star and releasing intense radiation

In a new study, scientists have found that a huge black hole - with a mass of about six Suns - is feasting upon a giant star and releasing intense radiation in deep space.

The star is as big as three solar masses and the cosmic event is taking place in V4641 Sagittarii which is a system around 20,000 light-years away from Earth. The system is in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius.

The photons have now been detected by the astronomers from V4641 Sagittarii which have a staggering 200 teraelectronvolts (TeV) energy in it.

According to scientists, gamma rays mostly originate inquasars, which are galactic cores, in which a huge amount of supermassive black holes are released.

Also Read:Centaur, an icy body in space, is shooting multiple jets of hot gas. What's going on?

V4641 Sagittarii is amicroquasar and functions like a mini version of a regular quasar.

"Photons detected from microquasars have usually much lower energies than those from quasars,"said Sabrina Casanova, of the Institute of Nuclear Physics Polish Academy of Sciences (IFJ PAN).

"Usually, we are talking about values of the order of tens of gigaelectronvolts. Meanwhile, we have observed something quite incredible in the data recorded by the detectors of the [High-Altitude Water Cherenkov]observatory: photons coming from a microquasar lying in our galaxy, and yet carrying energies tens of thousands of times higher than typical," he added.

How are gamma rays detected in space?

The HAWC gamma-ray observatory is situated on the side of the extinct Sierra Negra volcano in Mexico and has been designed to detect high-energy particles. For detecting the rays, it has 300 big steel tanks which are filled with purified water.

When the high-energy particles enter the tank, they begin a cascade of other particles which travel through the water faster in comparison to light.

Because of this, a flash of light known as Cherenkov radiation is created which is the electromagnetic versionof a sonic boom.

Watch:China Sends Three Astronauts To Tiangong Space Station

At any given time, HAWC is able to see 15 per cent of the sky and can scan two-thirds of the sky every 24 hours and eventually create a cosmic map.

V4641 Sagittarii with unexpected gamma rays appeared in one of these maps.

"While reviewing the sky maps in search of my next project, I noticed a region five degrees away from our galactic plane with bright emissions that had not been visible in previous datasets,"said physicist Xiaojie Wang.

"No gamma-ray source has been identified nor analysed in this region – so I seized the opportunity and led the analysis," he added.

(With inputs from agencies)