How do you weigh the biggest black holes in the universe? One answer now comes from a completely new and independent technique that astronomers have developed using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.

A composite image of data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (shown in purple) and Hubble Space Telescope (blue) reveals the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4649. By applying a new technique, scientists used Chandra data to measure the black hole at its center to be about 3.4 billion times more massive than the Sun. The value from this X-ray technique is consistent with a more traditional method using the motions of stars near the black hole. NGC 4649 is now one of only a handful of galaxies for which the mass of a supermassive black hole has been measured with two different methods.

By measuring a peak in the temperature of hot gas in the center of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4649, scientists have determined the mass of the galaxy’s supermassive black hole. The method, applied for the first time, gives results that are consistent with a traditional technique.

Astronomers have been seeking out different, independent ways of precisely weighing the largest supermassive black holes, that is, those that are billions of times more massive than the Sun. Until now, methods based on observations of the motions of stars or of gas in a disk near such large black holes had been used.

“This is tremendously important work since black holes can be elusive, and there are only a couple of ways to weigh them accurately,” said Philip Humphrey of the University of California at Irvine, who led the study. “It’s reassuring that two very different ways to measure the mass of a big black hole give such similar answers.”

NGC 4649 is now one of only a handful of galaxies for which the mass of a supermassive black hole has been measured with two different methods. In addition, this new X-ray technique confirms that the supermassive black hole in NGC 4649 is one of the largest in the local universe with a mass about 3.4 billion times that of the Sun, about a thousand times bigger than the black hole at the center of our galaxy.

The new technique takes advantage of the gravitational influence the black hole has on the hot gas near the center of the galaxy. As gas slowly settles towards the black hole, it gets compressed and heated. This causes a peak in the temperature of the gas right near the center of the galaxy. The more massive the black hole, the bigger the temperature peak detected by Chandra.

This effect was predicted by two of the co-authors — Fabrizio Brighenti from the University of Bologna, Italy, and William Mathews from the University of California at Santa Cruz — almost 10 years ago, but this is the first time it has been seen and used.

“It was wonderful to finally see convincing evidence of the effects of the huge black hole that we expected,” said Brighenti. “We were thrilled that our new technique worked just as well as the more traditional approach for weighing the black hole.”

The black hole in NGC 4649 is in a state where it does not appear to be rapidly pulling in material towards its event horizon, nor generating copious amounts of light as it grows. So, the presence and mass of the central black hole has to be studied more indirectly by tracking its effects on stars and gas surrounding it. This technique is well suited to black holes in this condition.

“Monster black holes like this one power spectacular light shows in the distant, early universe, but not in the local universe,” said Humphrey. “So, we can’t wait to apply our new method to other nearby galaxies harboring such inconspicuous black holes.”

These results will appear in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls science and flight operations from the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Mass.

Imagine having three clocks in your house, each chiming at a different time.

Astronomers have found the equivalent of three out-of-sync “clocks” in the ancient open star cluster NGC 6791. The dilemma may fundamentally challenge the way astronomers estimate cluster ages, researchers said.

In studying the dimmest burned-out stars in globular star cluster NGC 6791, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered a paradox: three different populations of stars exist in an object where all the stars should have formed at the same time out of an interstellar cloud of gas and dust. [Left] — This is a ground-based telescopic view of NGC 6791, located 13,300 light-years away in the constellation Lyra. The green inset box shows the view with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. [Top right] — The full Hubble Advanced Camera for Surveys field is full of stars estimated to be 8 billion years old. Two background galaxies can be seen at upper left. [Bottom right] — A blow up of view of a small region of the Advanced Camera for Surveys field reveals very faint white dwarfs. The blue circles identify hotter dwarfs that are 4 billion years old. The red circles identify cooler dwarfs that are 6 billion years old.

Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to study the dimmest stars in the cluster, astronomers uncovered three different age groups. Two of the populations are burned-out stars called white dwarfs. One group of these low-wattage stellar remnants appears to be 6 billion years old, another appears to be 4 billion years old. The ages are out of sync with those of the cluster’s normal stars, which are 8 billion years old.

“The age discrepancy is a problem because stars in an open cluster should be the same age. They form at the same time within a large cloud of interstellar dust and gas. So we were really puzzled about what was going on,” explained astronomer Luigi Bedin, who works at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md.

Ivan King of the University of Washington and leader of the Hubble study said: “This finding means that there is something about white dwarf evolution that we don’t understand.”

After extensive analysis, members of the research team realized how the two groups of white dwarfs can look different and yet have the same age. It is possible that the younger-looking group consists of the same type of stars, but the stars are paired off in binary-star systems, where two stars orbit each other. Because of the cluster’s great distance, astronomers see the paired stars as a brighter single star.

“It is their brightness that makes them look younger,” said team member Maurizio Salaris of Liverpool John Moores University in the United Kingdom.

Binary systems are also a significant fraction of the normal stellar population in NGC 6791, and are also observed in many other clusters. This would be the first time they have been found in a white-dwarf population.

“Our demonstration that binaries are the cause of the anomaly is an elegant resolution of a seemingly inexplicable enigma,” said team member Giampaolo Piotto the University of Padova in Italy.

Bedin and his colleagues are relieved that they now have only two ages to reconcile: an 8-billion-year age of the normal stellar population and a 6-billion-year age for the white dwarfs. All that is needed is a process that slows down white-dwarf evolution, the researchers said.

Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys analyzed the cooling rate of the entire population of white dwarfs in NGC 6791, from brightest to dimmest. Most star clusters are too far away and the white dwarfs are too faint to be seen by ground-based telescopes, but Hubble’s powerful vision sees many of them.

White dwarfs are the smoldering embers of Sun-like stars that no longer generate nuclear energy and have burned out. Their hot remaining cores radiate heat for billions of years as they slowly fade into darkness. Astronomers have used white dwarfs as a reliable measure of the ages of star clusters, because they are the relics of the first cluster stars that exhausted their nuclear fuel.

White dwarfs have long been considered dependable because they cool down at a predictable rate-the older the dwarf, the cooler it is, making it a seemingly perfect clock that has been ticking for almost as long as the cluster has existed.

NGC 6791 is one of the oldest and largest open clusters known, about 10 times larger than most open clusters and containing roughly 10,000 stars. The cluster is located in the constellation Lyra.

The first results appeared in the May 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, and the clarification about binaries was in the May 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Other members of the research team are Santi Cassisi of the Collurania Astronomical Observatory in Italy, and Jay Anderson, of the Space Telescope Science Institute.