Evidence for a 30 year old black hole has been uncovered by an armada of space orbiting observatories, including NASA's Chandra and Swift satellites, ESA's XMM-Newton and the German ROSAT observatory.

The satellites detected a bright source of X-rays that remained steady from 1995 to 2007, suggesting that a black hole is being fed by material falling onto it, either from the supernova or from a binary companion. The object is thought to be a remnant of supernova SN 1979C – the aftermath of an explosion of a 20-solar mass Sun that had reached the end of its life – and is located 50 million light years from Earth in the galaxy M100.

“If our interpretation is correct, this is the nearest example where the birth of a black hole has been observed,” says Daniel Patnaude of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, who led the study.

Distant black holes are usually detected from their gamma-ray bursts (GRB), but SN 1979C belongs to a nearby class of black hole that forms when the core of a star collapses but does not produce such an outburst.

“This may be the first time the common way of making a black hole has been observed,” says team member Abraham Loeb, also of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “However, it is very difficult to detect this type of black hole birth because decades of X-ray observations are needed to make the case.”

An alternative explanation is that a young, rapidly spinning neutron star is producing the X-ray emission, which would make the object in SN 1979C the youngest and brightest example of such a “pulsar wind nebula” and the youngest known neutron star. Whichever interpretation is preferred, the discovery will provide a unique opportunity to watch this type of object develop from an early age, providing vital clues to the story of stellar evolution.

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