Overview
- European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope used time-resolved optical spectroscopy to follow the full 2023 eruption of Swift J1727.8−1613, producing one of the most complete optical records of a black hole outburst.
- The team recorded simultaneous episodes of inflow and ejection, with the system launching both relativistic jets and disc winds as material moved through the accretion disc.
- Crucially, dense disc winds were observed to persist into the faint, late stage of the eruption when X-ray emission had fallen to about one hundredth of peak brightness.
- Authors interpret the late-stage outflows to mean black holes in binaries may accrete far less of the transferred mass, because a substantial fraction is blown back into space, a point emphasized by lead author Dr Noel Castro Segura.
- The results, based on VLT X-Shooter data and published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, could force revisions to models of binary evolution, accretion efficiency, and how such systems feed energy and matter into their surroundings.