© European Space AgencyArtist's impression of the accretion disc around the massive black hole Ansky and its interaction with a small celestial object.
Astronomers previously had little reason to pay any attention to galaxy SDSS1335+0728, which is 300 million light years from Earth. But in 2019, the galaxy suddenly started shining with a brightness that turned some telescopes its way.
Then in February last year, Chilean astronomers started noticing regular bursts of X-rays coming from the galaxy.
This was a sign that the galaxy's sleeping black hole was waking from its slumber, according to the study
published in the journal Nature Astronomy
.Most galaxies, including our home Milky Way, have a supermassive black hole squatting at their heart, like a spider in a web.
These invisible monsters gobble up everything that comes their way — not even light can escape their almighty suck.
If an unlucky star swings too close, it gets torn apart.
The star's shattered material becomes a stream that spins rapidly around the black hole, forming what is called an accretion disk that is gradually swallowed.
But black holes can also go through long periods of inactivity when they do not attract matter.
And after a fairly uneventful period, the bright, compact region at the heart of galaxy SDSS1335+0728 has been classified as an "active galactic nucleus" — and given the nickname "Ansky".
"This rare event provides an opportunity for astronomers to observe a black hole's behavior in real time" using several X-ray telescopes, astronomer Lorena Hernandez-Garcia of Chile's Valparaiso University said in a statement.
