N6946-BH1 is a disappearing giant star formerly seen in the galaxy

NGC 6946 NGC 6946, sometimes referred to as the Fireworks Galaxy, is a face-on intermediate spiral galaxy with a small bright nucleus, whose location in the sky straddles the boundary between the northern constellations of Cepheus and Cygnus. Its dista ...

, on the northern border of the

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The origins of the e ...

of Cygnus. The star, either a

red supergiant Red supergiants (RSGs) are stars with a supergiant luminosity class ( Yerkes class I) of spectral type K or M. They are the largest stars in the universe in terms of volume, although they are not the most massive or luminous. Betelgeuse and Anta ...

or a

yellow hypergiant A yellow hypergiant (YHG) is a massive star with an extended atmosphere, a spectral class from A to K, and, starting with an initial mass of about 20–60 solar masses, has lost as much as half that mass. They are amongst the most visually lumino ...

, was 25 times the mass of the sun, and was 20 million light years distant from Earth. In March through to May 2009 its

bolometric luminosity Luminosity is an absolute measure of radiated electromagnetic power (light), the radiant power emitted by a light-emitting object over time. In astronomy, luminosity is the total amount of electromagnetic energy emitted per unit of time by a s ...

increased to at least a million solar luminosities, but by 2015 it had disappeared from optical view. In the mid and

near infrared Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from around ...

an object is still visible, however, it is fading away with a brightness proportional to t^−4/3. The brightening was insufficient to be a

supernova A supernova is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. It has the plural form supernovae or supernovas, and is abbreviated SN or SNe. This transient astronomical event occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star or when ...

, and is called a

failed supernova A failed supernova is an astronomical event in time domain astronomy in which a star suddenly brightens as in the early stage of a supernova, but then does not increase to the massive flux of a supernova. They could be counted as a subcategory of ...

. The star's coordinates were at RA and Dec . The brightness of the star, given by its apparent magnitude in different colour bands on 2 July 2005 is given by R = 21, V = 21, B = 22, U = 23. Prior to the optical outburst the star was about 100,000 times as bright as the sun. After the outburst it was invisible in the visual band and has declined to 5000 times as bright as the sun in infrared radiation. One hypothesis is that the core of the star collapsed to form a

black hole A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravitation, gravity is so strong that nothing, including light or other Electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts t ...

. The collapsing matter formed a burst of

neutrino A neutrino ( ; denoted by the Greek letter ) is a fermion (an elementary particle with spin of ) that interacts only via the weak interaction and gravity. The neutrino is so named because it is electrically neutral and because its rest mass ...

s that lowered the total mass of the star by a fraction of a percent. This caused a shock wave that blasted out the star's envelope to make it brighter. N6946-BH1 has supplied evidence contrary to the conventional idea that black holes are usually formed after a supernova, suggesting instead that a star may bypass this eventuality and yet collapse into a black hole. Observed

type II supernova A Type II supernova (plural: ''supernovae'' or ''supernovas'') results from the rapid collapse and violent explosion of a massive star. A star must have at least 8 times, but no more than 40 to 50 times, the mass of the Sun () to undergo this ...

e do not originate from stars with initial masses greater than about , and the rate of large star formation appears to exceed the rate of supernovae. The expectation is that something else is happening to these extra large stars. Failed supernovae and black hole formation is one proposed explanation. If this event indeed reflected the formation of a black hole, it is the first time that black hole formation has been observed.

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N6946-BH1
Giant Star Becomes A Black Hole Right Before Our Eyes! {{Stars of Cygnus, state=collapsed Stars in NGC 6946 M-type supergiants Astronomical objects discovered in 2015 Cygnus (constellation) Extragalactic stars