Universe ID: 11674

Occulting Clouds

Story by Francis Reddy | Visualizations by Wolfgang Steffen Released on October 21, 2014

At the hearts of most big galaxies, including our own Milky Way, there lurks a supermassive black hole weighing millions to billions of times the sun's mass. As gas falls toward a monster black hole, it gathers into a disk and becomes compressed and heated, ultimately emitting X-rays. In 2014, using data from NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer satellite, scientists uncovered a dozen instances where X-ray signals from active galaxies dimmed as a result of a cloud of gas moving across our line of sight. Measurements show these clouds vary in shape and size but average 4 billion miles across, or large enough to span the solar system from the sun to beyond Pluto’s orbit. The findings will help explain how gas funnels into the hot accretion disk that feeds a supermassive black hole. Watch the video to see the cloudy structure of an active galaxy's core.

For More Information

NASA.gov

Story Credits

Lead Visualizer/Animator:
Wolfgang Steffen (Instituto de Astronomia, UNAM)

Visualizer/Animator:
Scott Wiessinger (USRA)

Video Editor:
Scott Wiessinger (USRA)

Producer:
Scott Wiessinger (USRA)

Lead Writer:
Francis Reddy (Syneren Technologies)

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Video courtesy of NASA/GSFC/UNAM/Wolfgang Steffen
Images courtesy of UNAM/Wolfgang Steffen