QV Telescopii facts for kids
QV Telescopii is a special group of three stars found in the southern part of the sky. It is located in the constellation called Telescopium, which is near another constellation named Pavo.
This star system is very far away from our Sun, about 1,120 light years. A light-year is the distance light travels in one year, which is a huge distance! QV Telescopii is also slowly moving away from us at a speed of 15 kilometers per second.
In May 2020, scientists made an exciting discovery about QV Telescopii. They found that it contains a black hole. This made it the closest known black hole to Earth at that time. It was also the first black hole found in a star system that you could see with your own eyes, though the black hole itself is invisible.
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What is QV Telescopii?
QV Telescopii is not just one star, but a triple star system. This means it has three stars that are all orbiting around each other. Imagine three friends dancing in a circle!
One of the stars is a bright, blue-white star. The other two stars are closer together and orbit each other. The black hole is thought to be orbiting with one of these pairs of stars.
Where is Telescopium?
The constellation Telescopium is a group of stars that look like a telescope from Earth. People have imagined shapes in the stars for thousands of years. Telescopium is a smaller constellation in the southern sky. You would need to be in the Southern Hemisphere to see it clearly.
The Black Hole Discovery
Scientists used a special telescope called the European Southern Observatory's 2.2-meter telescope to study QV Telescopii. They noticed something strange about how the stars were moving. One of the stars was orbiting something invisible.
This invisible object had a very strong gravitational pull. After careful study, they realized it must be a black hole. Black holes are areas in space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape.
How Do We Find Black Holes?
Black holes are usually invisible because they don't let any light out. So, how do scientists find them? They look for their effects on nearby objects.
- Star Movement: If a star is orbiting an empty space, it might be orbiting a black hole.
- X-rays: When gas and dust fall into a black hole, they heat up and release powerful X-rays.
In the case of QV Telescopii, it was the unusual movement of one of the stars that gave away the black hole's presence.
Images for kids
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A light curve for QV Telescopii, plotted from TESS data. This graph shows how the brightness of the star system changes over time.
See also
In Spanish: QV Telescopii para niños
