http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20000114/aponline165828_000.htm

Black Hole Found Near Earth By Paul Recer AP Science Writer Friday, Jan. 14, 2000; 4:58 p.m. EST

ATLANTA  Four bursts of X-ray energy have alerted astronomers to a black hole just 1,600 light years away from Earth, practically on the doorstep in astronomical terms.

The black hole was discovered last September after an Australian amateur astronomer noticed the suddenly brightening of a star and notified the pros.

Donald Smith, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology astronomer, and others focused X-ray detectors on the target star and quickly got a surprise. On Sept. 14, the black hole announced its presence with an eruption of X-rays that was brief, but dramatic.

Three other eruptions followed, each one lasting less than two hours. But it was enough for Smith and a team of radio astronomers to determine that the energy was coming from a black hole.

"This is one of the fastest (bursts) we have ever seen," said Robert M. Hjellming of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

Smith said that although the bursts were brief, at peak output they were the brightest source of X-rays in the sky, except for the sun.

The black hole is located in constellation Sagittari and centers on a star called V4641 Sgr.

Smith said the bursts come and go so rapidly that it may represent a new subclass of X-ray-producing objects.

Radio telescopes detected twin jets of matter firing out of the black hole region at nearly the speed of light. Three other similar X-ray sources have been detected in distant parts of the universe and called by astronomers "microquasars." They resemble quasars, but are much smaller.

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http://news.excite.com/news/r/000115/11/space-eclipse

Bright red moon expected during Thursday eclipse Updated 11:48 AM ET January 15, 2000 By Deborah Zabarenko ATLANTA, (Reuters) - The moon will turn bright red on Thursday night during a total lunar eclipse that should be easy to see throughout the Americas, an astronomer said Saturday.

The Earth's shadow will totally cover the moon from 11:05 p.m. on Thursday to 12:22 A.M. Friday.

"We're kind of expecting that this eclipse will be very bright and probably very bright red," astronomer Brad Schaefer, an expert on this phenomenon at Yale University, told reporters at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Atlanta.

When the Earth's shadow passed over the moon, the brightest light visible from the lunar surface would be the reddish- orange light from the sun bending around the Earth, Schaefer said.

"This same thing happens to us (on Earth) during sunsets," he said. "When the sun has just set, you look off towards the direction of sunset and the same physics is going on ... and so what you're seeing on the moon is basically sunset colors.

"In fact, what you're seeing is the sunset colors completely around the globe. You're seeing all of the world's sunsets and all of the world's sunrises simultaneously," Schaefer said. "If the brightest thing in the sky illuminating the moonscape is a bright red light, well, the moon will appear red."

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 15, 2000

Answers

Hey I have an idea....since that black hole is so close let's feed it LL and y2kPro and see what happens...heh heh

-- Mabel Dodge (cynical@me.now), January 15, 2000.

Thanks Hokie for passing on to us these two articles,..I..uh...think. (looking over shoulder at black hole and blood red moon) Gulp..

-- kritter (kritter@adelphia.net), January 15, 2000.

LOL, yep a bit ah eye opening kritter.

Mabel, let me be the first to donate 5 bucks to the mission. I hear from NASA that China has the cheapest missile launches, and the boys at NASA went ahead and gave China the tech know-how so they can now launch with percission, so I say we go with a Chinese launch. Heck, if it's good enough for NASA, it's good enough for us to lift y2k pro's butt into orbit, steerin' strait for V4641 Sgr!

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 16, 2000.

Whoa! Why...these two reports almost...sound...Biblical!

-- chairborne commando (what-me-worry@armageddon.com), January 16, 2000.

Mabel- You forgot Chicken Little and Maria.

-- Gia (laureltree7@hotmail.com), January 16, 2000.

From: Y2K, ` la Carte by Dancr (pic), near Monterey, California

If one shoots an X-ray at the thing, shouldn't it take a few thousand years for any answer to come back?

-- Dancr (addy.available@my.webpage), January 16, 2000.

Sooooooo....am I supposed to worry? Geesh, you think if we do feed it something it will go away?

Actually this does sound biblical because when you see how awry things are for the earth and the heavens at the end of time, you just wonder what the heck could cause something like that.

"Immediately after those horrible days end, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give light, the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of heaven will be shaken..." "every island disappeared" "all of the mountains were leveled" "earthquake greater than ever before in human history" "hailstones weighing 75 lbs falling from the sky" "mountain falls from heaven into the sea" "On that day, there will be continuous day. ....There will be no normal day and night, for at evening time it will still be light." "heavens will roll up like a scroll"

Sucked into a blaaaaaaack hoooooooole..........

-- tt (cuddluppy@aol.com), January 16, 2000.

A reddish tinge to the moon during a total eclipse is nothing new. We've all seen sunsets with a red sky, or red clouds. The refraction of sunlight through a humid atmosphere separates the spectrum. Red light is deflected more than blue light, so the last light we see at sunset, and the first light at dawn, is reddish.

The geometry of the lunar eclipse on January 20 is shown h ere, and it's evident that the moon will be passing near the edge of the umbra rather than through the center of it. To an observer on the Moon it will seem that the sun only dips slightly below the horizon.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), January 16, 2000.

Dancr,
I inferred that the detected x-rays were autonomously emitted by the black hole around 1,600 years ago (assuming that they traveled at the speed of light and that this black hole is around the same distance from earth today as it was 1,600 years ago), rather than the result of any signal directed at it from earth.

-- David L (bumpkin@dnet.net), January 16, 2000.