Dr Stern and his colleagues used the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (Nustar) space telescope to examine the X-rays coming out of the black hole candidates spotted by Wise, presenting their findings in a paper to appear in Astrophysical Journal.
Using these two instruments, the scientists were able to examine the event and determine that the mass of the planet being devoured by the black hole was somewhere between 14-30 times that of Jupiter.