BEKSINSKI

Spaniards researchers discover the first black hole orbiting a “spinning” star

      he Be star spins at extremely high velocity, ejecting matter through an equatorial disk. Part of this matter falls on to the black hole forming an accretion disk.

Gabriel Pérez

here's a star about 8,500 light-years away that's spinning so fast its surface speed exceeds 620,000 mph. Astronomers are familiar with these kinds of stars, but this one's wholly unique in that it has a rather strange companion: a black hole.

To date, astronomers have catalogued more than 80 of these Be type stars. They're typically members of a binary system, with the companion being a neutron star (collapsed stars that aren't big enough to form black holes). Amazingly, Be stars can spin at these horrendous speeds without breaking-up, producing huge centrifugal forces.

The Be star in question, MWC 656, was first discovered in 2010. But Spanish researchers now say there's a black hole spinning around it. Astronomy Magazine reports:

A detailed analysis of its spectrum allowed scientists to infer the characteristics of its companion. "It turned out to be an object with a mass between 3.8 and 6.9 solar masses," said Ignasi Ribas of CSIC at the Institute of Space Sciences. "An object like that, invisible to telescopes and with such large mass, can only be a black hole because no neutron star with more than three solar masses can exist."

The black hole orbits the more massive Be star and is fed by matter ejected from the latter. "The high rotation speed of the Be star causes matter to be ejected into an equatorial disk," said Ignacio Negueruela at the University of Alicante. "This matter is attracted by the black hole and falls on to it, forming another disk, called an accretion disk. By studying the emission from the accretion disk, we could analyze the motion of the black hole and measure its mass."

The astronomers think it's a member of a hidden population of Be stars paired with black holes and that they're more common than previous thought. Unfortunately, they're hard to detect because their black holes are fed from gas ejected by the Be stars without producing much radiation.

Read more at Astronomy.com.

Barcelona, Spain, GAUDÍ

FRANCIS BACON Painting Could Sell For Millions At Auction

A portrait by FRANCIS BACON of his lover and muse is going up for auction in Christie on Feb 13, which an estimated price of 30 million pounds ( $49.3 millions)

"Portrait of George Dyer Talking" depicts a young Londoner with whom Bacon had a turbulent relationship. It was exhibited at Bacon's first major retrospective show in Paris in 1971. Dyer killed himself just before it opened.

Francis Outred, head of contemporary art at Christie's Europe, said Wednesday that the painting offered "a powerful portrait of arguably one of Bacon's greatest loves."

JEAN MARIE SALANIÉ

      Acrylique/pastel sur toile 100cmx100cm

JEAN MARIE SALANIÉ  expressionist work on the human body leads precisely force expressions to abstract delirium, non-figuration, the limit is often blurred, residing in the assessment of the player (the canvas). Imaginary gestures, movements, distorsion giving Salanié the chance of endless fields of investigation; allowing the viewer to imagine, to feel, to look at differents ways...

GRASZKA PAULSKA

                    pastel on panel -57x70cm

                                        I'm in the shadow of you  oil on canvas 60x100cm

     

           Untitled

           You are not an Angel oil 50x70cm

                           

       100x50 cm oil on canvas

            triptych 150x65cm pastel

                                Butterfly 100x70cm

            Hot Summer Evening  60x50cm

Graszka Paulska is an artist based out of Poland who has an amazing ability to create both realistic females figures and haunting deformed creatures in her paintings.