X-ray Nova Flaring Black Hole animation

Credits

• Animator

  • Michael Lentz (KBR Wyle Services, LLC) [Lead]

• Writer

  • Francis Reddy (University of Maryland College Park)

• Producer

  • Scott Wiessinger (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)

Related Pages

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    NASA's Black Hole Orrery

    May 2nd, 2022
    (updated Oct. 6th, 2023)

    Learn more about the best-known black hole systems in our galaxy and its neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud. This visualization presents 22 X-ray binary systems that host confirmed black holes at the same scale, with their orbits sped up by about 22,000 times. The view of each system reflects how we see it from Earth. Star colors ranging from blue-white to reddish represent temperatures from 5 times hotter to 45% cooler than our Sun. In most of these systems, a stream of matter from the star forms an accretion disk around the black hole. In others, like the famous system called Cygnus X-1, the star produces a hefty outflow that is partly swept up by the black hole’s gravity to form the disk. The accretion disks use a different color scheme because they sport even higher temperatures than the stars. The largest disk shown, belonging to a binary called GRS 1915, spans a distance greater than that separating Mercury from our Sun. The black holes themselves are shown larger than in reality using spheres scaled to reflect their masses.Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and Scientific Visualization StudioMusic: "Event Horizon" from Gravity. Written and produced by Lars LeonhardWatch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.Complete transcript available. || Black_Hole_Orrery_Still.jpg (3840x2160) [321.9 KB] || Black_Hole_Orrery_Still_searchweb.png (320x180) [25.6 KB] || Black_Hole_Orrery_Still_thm.png (80x40) [4.1 KB] || 14149_Black_Hole_Orrery_FINAL_1080.mp4 (1920x1080) [118.8 MB] || 14149_Black_Hole_Orrery_FINAL_1080.webm (1920x1080) [12.4 MB] || 14149_Black_Hole_Orrery_ProRes_3840x2160_2997.mov (3840x2160) [1.9 GB] || 14149_Black_Hole_Orrery_FINAL_4k_Best.mp4 (3840x2160) [379.2 MB] || 14149_Black_Hole_Orrery_FINAL_4k.mp4 (3840x2160) [176.7 MB] || 14149_Black_Hole_Orrery_SRT_Captions.en_US.srt [1.9 KB] || 14149_Black_Hole_Orrery_SRT_Captions.en_US.vtt [1.9 KB] ||

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    ID: 14132 Produced Video

    Black Hole Week: Black Hole GIFs

    April 12th, 2022
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    Black Hole WeekThis page provides social media assets used during previous celebrations of Black Hole Week. Join in! Below, you'll find many GIFs to use. ||

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    ID: 11948 Produced Video

    X-ray Echoes Create a Black Hole Bull's-eye

    July 9th, 2015
    (updated May 3rd, 2023)

    Rings of X-ray light centered on V404 Cygni, a binary system containing an erupting black hole (dot at center), were imaged by the X-ray Telescope aboard NASA's Swift satellite from June 30 to July 4. A narrow gap splits the middle ring in two. Color indicates the energy of the X-rays, with red representing the lowest (800 to 1,500 electron volts, eV), green for medium (1,500 to 2,500 eV), and the most energetic (2,500 to 5,000 eV) shown in blue. For comparison, visible light has energies ranging from about 2 to 3 eV. The dark lines running diagonally through the image are artifacts of the imaging system.Credit: Andrew Beardmore (Univ. of Leicester) and NASA/Swift || rings_1080.gif (1080x1080) [1.3 MB] ||

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    ID: 11108 Produced Video

    X-ray Nova Reveals a New Black Hole in Our Galaxy

    Oct. 5th, 2012
    (updated May 3rd, 2023)

    On Sept. 16, NASA's Swift satellite detected a rising tide of high-energy X-rays from a source toward the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The outburst, produced by a rare X-ray nova, announced the presence of a previously unknown stellar-mass black hole. An X-ray nova is a short-lived X-ray source that appears suddenly, reaches its emission peak in a few days and then fades out over a period of months. The outburst arises when a torrent of stored gas suddenly rushes toward one of the most compact objects known, either a neutron star or a black hole. Named Swift J1745-26 after the coordinates of its sky position, the nova is located a few degrees from the center of our galaxy toward the constellation Sagittarius. While astronomers do not know its precise distance, they think the object resides about 20,000 to 30,000 light-years away in the galaxy's inner region. The pattern of X-rays from the nova signals that the central object is a black hole.Ground-based observatories detected infrared and radio emissions, but thick clouds of obscuring dust have prevented astronomers from catching Swift J1745-26 in visible light.The black hole must be a member of a low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) system, which includes a normal, sun-like star. A stream of gas flows from the normal star and enters into a storage disk around the black hole. In most LMXBs, the gas in the disk spirals inward, heats up as it heads toward the black hole, and produces a steady stream of X-rays. But under certain conditions, stable flow within the disk depends on the rate of matter flowing into it from the companion star. At certain rates, the disk fails to maintain a steady internal flow and instead flips between two dramatically different conditions — a cooler, less ionized state where gas simply collects in the outer portion of the disk like water behind a dam, and a hotter, more ionized state that sends a tidal wave of gas surging toward the center.This phenomenon, called the thermal-viscous limit cycle, helps astronomers explain transient outbursts across a wide range of systems, from protoplanetary disks around young stars, to dwarf novae - where the central object is a white dwarf star - and even bright emission from supermassive black holes in the hearts of distant galaxies. ||

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