Video Credit: NASA
A Black Hole Sez: “Mmmmm, Donut!”
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Tag Archives: Black Hole
NGC 4424
Video Credit: NASA
Microlensing
On 11 June, I posted a link to a YouTube video about how microlensing was used to find a black hole drifting through our galaxy. This animation was made from set of Hubble Space Telescope photos that capture the gravitational effects the black hole. It’s warping of the fabric of space can be measured by the way it warps the light of a background star, an effect called gravitational microlensing. As seen by Hubble, the background star momentarily brightened, then faded back to normal brightness, as the foreground black hole drifted by.
Image Credit: NASA / ESA / STScI
An Isolated Black Hole
Video Credit: NASA
A Black Hole at the Bullseye
The rings in this image surround a black hole that is part of a binary system called V404 Cygni. Located about 7,800 light years away from Earth, the black hole is sucking material away from a companion star. The material in the rings glows in x-rays, so astronomers refer to such systems as “x-ray binaries.” The x-ray images of the rings were captured by the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. (I designed some of the assemblies in the power and thermal control systems for one of the instruments on Swift.)
Image Credits
X-ray: NASA / CXC / U.Wisc-Madison / S. Heinz et al.
Optical / IR: Pan-STARR
Sonification: The Perseus Galaxy Black Hole
Video Credit: NASA
A Kilonova
Video Credit: NASA
Doing Science
Video Credit: ESO
Messier 77’s Black Hole
Video Credit: ESO
A Black Ignites Star Formation in a Dwarf Galaxy
Video Credit: NASA
Stars Near the Center of Our Galaxy
Video Credit: ESO
Jets at the Center of the Galaxy
Video Credit: NASA
Finding a Black Hole
Video Credit: ESO
A Fizzled Gamma Ray Burst
Video Credit: NASA
Mergers and Acquisitions
This is a simulation of a black hole eating a neutron star. The blue pattern represents the gravitational waves emitted by the event.
Video Credits—
Numerical relativity simulation: S.V. Chaurasia (Stockholm University), T. Dietrich (Potsdam University and Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics)
Scientific visualization: T. Dietrich (Potsdam University and Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics), N. Fischer, S. Ossokine, H. Pfeiffer (Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics)
Neutrinos from Near a Black Hole
Video Credit: NASA
X Marks the Spot
This Hubble Space Telescope image of the core of the spiral galaxy M51 shows a dark “X” silhouetted across the galaxy’s nucleus. The “X” is caused by absorption of light by dust and marks the position of a black hole which may have a mass about one-million times the mass of the Sun. The darkest bar may be an edge-on view of a dust ring 100 light-years in diameter. It blocks the black hole its accretion disk as seen from Earth. The second bar of the “X” could be a second disk seen edge on, or it might be rotating gas and dust in M51 intersecting with the jets and ionization cones from the black hole.
Image Credit: NASA
Sagittarius A* at the Center of Our Galaxy
A black hole called Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star) lies at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, only 27,000 light-years away. Its mass is roughly 4 million times the mass of the Sun. Our galaxy’s black hole is mild-mannered compared to the central black holes in some other galaxies, much more calmly consuming material around it. However, it does sometimes flare-up. An flareup lasting several hours is documented in this series of X-ray images from the orbiting Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR). NuSTAR is the first instrument to provide focused views of the area surrounding Sgr A* at X-ray energies higher than those accessible to the Chandra and XMM observatories. The flare sequence is shown in the panels on the right. The images cover a two-day span. X-rays are generated in material heated to over 100 million C and traveling at nearly the speed of light as it falls into the black hole. The center X-ray image spans about 100 light-years. Its bright white region is the hottest material closest to the black hole; the pinkish cloud probably belongs to the remnant of a nearby supernova. Click the picture to embiggen it.
Sgr A* is monitored on a daily basis by the X-ray telescope of the Swift satellite. I made contributions to the design of the power and thermal control systems of the Burst Alert Telescope instrument on Swift.
Image Credit: NASA
At the Core
There’s a supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. It’s known as Sagittarius A* and shown in the center of this infrared (red and yellow) and X-ray (blue) composite image. Data from observations taken in orbit by Chandra‘s X-ray telescope was used to create an image the diffuse emission surrounding the black hole. See the close-up inset. The inset’s field of view covers an area about 1/2 light-year across the galactic center some 26,000 light-years away. These X-ray emissions originate in hot gas drawn from the winds of massive young stars near the galactic center. The Chandra data indicate that only 1% or so of the gas within the black hole’s gravitational influence ever reaches the event horizon after losing enough heat and angular momentum to fall into the black hole. The rest of the gas escapes in an outflow. This explains why the Milky Way’s black hole is so quiet, much fainter than might be expected in energetic X-rays.
Note: All data is subject to future verification. Beowulf Shaeffer was unavailable for comment.
Image Credit: NASA
A Nearby Black Hole
Video Credit: ESO
Looking at an Asteroid and Seeing a Black Hole
This animation simulates an X-ray outburst from a black hole MAXI J0637-043 that was detected by the REXIS instrument aboard the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, as the black hole moved through REXIS’s line of sight. The outburst is initially intense, but it gradually fades. The animation was constructed using data collected by the X-ray spectrometer while observations were being made of the space around asteroid Bennu on 11 November, 2019.Image Credits: NASA / Goddard / University of Arizona / MIT / Harvard
A Galaxy Shattering Kaboom
Video Credit: NASA
A Black Hole on Edge
When viewed almost on edge, the disk of gas spinning around a black hole takes on a odd double-humped appearance. The black hole’s extreme gravity deflects the paths of light coming from different parts of the disk, producing the warped image. What the observer sees depends on his viewing angle. The greatest distortion occurs when viewing the system nearly edgewise.Animation Credit: NASA / Jeremy Schnittman
Watching a Tidal Disruption Event
Video Credit: NASA
A Microquasar
This is SS 433, a microquasar located about 18,000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila. This image at submillimeter wavelengths is special because it shows the jets emitted by a hot, swirling disc of material around the black hole at SS 433’s center. The jets’ corkscrew shapes are created by a phenomenon known as precession. The two jets are slowly wobbling about their spin axes in the same manner as a spinning top as it slows down. The corkscrew is enormous—5000 times the size of the Solar System.
Image Credit: ESO