New Simulation Sheds Light on Spiraling Supermassive Black Holes

In this visualization, a binary system containing two supermassive black holes and their accretion disks circle each other, revealing the dramatic distortions produced by their gravity. The different colors of the accretion disks make it easier to track where light from each black hole turns up.Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Jeremy Schnittman and Brian P. Powell This simulation explores the connection between two of the most elusive phenomena in the universe, black holes and dark matter. In the visualization, dark matter particles are gray spheres attached to shaded trails representing their motion. Redder trails indicate particles closer to the black hole's event horizon. The ergosphere, where all matter and light must follow the black hole's spin, is shown in teal.Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center In this illustration, a black hole pulls material from a neighboring star and into its accretion disk. Above the disk is a region of subatomic particles called the corona.Credit: Aurore Simonnet and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center This animation shows the explosive merging of two neutron stars, immediately followed by the eruption of powerful jets (orange) and then expanding shock waves where the jets plow into surrounding material (pink structures at the tip of each jet). The animation then shows the kilonova (blue), which contains neutron-rich debris and glows due to the decay of newly forged radioactive elements. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab This visualization shows gravitational waves emitted by two black holes (black spheres) of nearly equal mass as they spiral together and merge. Yellow structures near the black holes illustrate the strong curvature of space-time in the region. Orange ripples represent distortions of space-time caused by the rapidly orbiting masses. These distortions spread out and weaken, ultimately becoming gravitational waves (purple). The merger timescale depends on the masses of the black holes. For a system containing black holes with about 30 times the sun’s mass, similar to the one detected by LIGO in 2015, the orbital period at the start of the movie is just 65 milliseconds, with the black holes moving at about 15 percent the speed of light. Space-time distortions radiate away orbital energy and cause the binary to contract quickly. As the two black holes near each other, they merge into a single black hole that settles into its "ringdown" phase, where the final gravitational waves are emitted. For the 2015 LIGO detection, these events played out in little more than a quarter of a second. This simulation was performed on the Pleiades supercomputer at NASA's Ames Research Center. Credit: NASA/Bernard J. Kelly (Goddard and Univ. of Maryland Baltimore County), Chris Henze (Ames) and Tim Sandstrom (CSC Government Solutions LLC) Illustration of a black hole outburst. Sometimes an accretion disk flips into an unstable state that causes a greater flow of matter toward the black hole. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Conceptual Image Lab Gas glows brightly in this computer simulation of supermassive black holes only 40 orbits from merging. Models like this may eventually help scientists pinpoint real examples of these powerful binary systems. This animated GIF rotates a frozen version of the simulation through 360 degrees as viewed from the plane of the disk.Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center This video shows what the view might be like between two circling supermassive black holes around 18.6 million miles (30 million kilometers) apart with an orbital period of 46 minutes. The simulation shows how the black holes distort the starry background and capture light, producing black hole silhouettes. A distinctive feature called a photon ring outlines the black holes. The entire system has a mass about 1 million times the Sun’s.Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; background, ESA/Gaia/DPAC Illustration of a star exploding in a supernova and leaving behind an expanding shell of hot gas known as a supernova remnant. Credit: ESA/Hubble (L. Calçada) This animation of supercomputer data shows both low-energy X-rays (red) from the inner accretion disk and high-energy X-rays (blue) from the inner corona of a stellar-mass black hole. Particles in the corona scatter soft X-rays from the disk and give them an energy boost, resulting in hard X-ray emission. We view the scene from a perspective 45 degrees above the plane of the accretion disk.Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/J. Schnittman, J. Krolik (JHU) and S. Noble (RIT) This animation illustrates what happens when an unlucky star strays too close to a monster black hole. Gravitational forces create intense tides that break the star apart into a stream of gas. The trailing part of the stream escapes the system, while the leading part swings back around, surrounding the black hole with a disk of debris. This cataclysmic phenomenon is called a tidal disruption event.Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA/GESTAR) This animation illustrates what happens when an unlucky star strays too close to a monster black hole. Gravitational forces create intense tides that break the star apart into a stream of gas. The trailing part of the stream escapes the system, while the leading part swings back around, surrounding the black hole with a disk of debris. A powerful jet can also form. This cataclysmic phenomenon is called a tidal disruption event.Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA/GESTAR) Thumbnail 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. Related pages

Complete transcript available. A map showing where the Moon’s shadow will cross the U.S. during the 2023 annular solar eclipse and 2024 total solar eclipse. Available at 5400 x 2700, 10,800 x 5400, and 22,500 x 11,250. Mean fossil fuel emissions for over 100 countries around the world for the period 2015-2020. This version is provided with white background and black text. Arctic sea ice minimum area 1979-2022, with graph You make my heart go boom.An illustration of a supernova explosion caused by the collapse of a massive star. At the center is an animated pulsation heart with the text “You make my heart go boom!” around the heart.Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (KBRwyle) I get a kick out of you.Observations using the Very Large Array radio telescope (orange) reveal the needle-like trail of pulsar J0002+6216 outside the shell of supernova remnant CTB 1. The pulsar escaped the remnant some 5,000 years ago. Overlay text says: “I get a kick out of you.”Image credit: Credit: Composite by Jayanne English, University of Manitoba, using data from NRAO/F. Schinzel et al., DRAO/Canadian Galactic Plane Survey and NASA/IRAS I'm tangled up with you.A yarn illustration of a black hole pulling in an unfortunate star and getting pulled apart and unraveled by it. This type of cosmic occurrence is called a tidal disruption event. The material from the star will now orbits the black hole for a long time before being pulled into it. Overlay text says: “I’m tangled up with you!”Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (KBRwyle) You are my heart & soul.The Heart (upper right) and Soul (lower left) nebula seen in an infrared mosaic from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, zooming in and out similar to a heartbeat with the text: “You are my heart and soul”.Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA You blow me away!Eta Carinae is famous for a brilliant and unusual outburst, called the "Great Eruption.” It's located about 7,500 light-years from Earth and contains one of the biggest and brightest stars in our galaxy. Learn more here.Image credit: Credit: A. Fujii, J. Morse (BoldlyGo Inst), N. Smith (U Arizona), Hubble SM4 ERO Team, NASA, ESA, STScI, JPL-Caltech, CXC, ESO, NOAO, AURA, NSF Love is in the air and so is the flying telescope SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy. It carries a 2.7-meter telescope in a modified Boeing 747-SP aircraft to study the universe with infrared light that does not reach Earth’s surface.Credit: NASA/SOFIA/Proudfit Each of the James Webb Space Telescope's 18 beryllium mirrors is coated with a thin layer of gold to better reflect infrared light. With its longer wavelength coverage and much greater sensitivity than Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to study distant planets and the earliest stages of the universe. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will have 18 detectors to Hubble's one, allowing it to see 100 times as much sky. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope's enormous field of view will allow it to see large pieces of the the sky. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will increase our understanding of the nature of the universe. Planets orbiting distant worlds are one of the targets for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. This image of the “Tarantula Nebula” (officially known as 30 Doradus) combines data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State Univ./L. Townsley et al.; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/JWST ERO Production Team NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is a powerful space observatory that opens a wide window on the universe. Fermi scans the entire sky every three hours as it orbits Earth, setting its sights on supermassive black holes, gamma-ray bursts, pulsars, and more.Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA/GESTAR) NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is a powerful space observatory that opens a wide window on the universe. Fermi scans the entire sky every three hours as it orbits Earth, setting its sights on supermassive black holes, gamma-ray bursts, pulsars, and more.Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA/GESTAR) These two black holes are just 40 orbits away from merging in this simulation of the light their environment emits as they dance. Vertical version.Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center These two black holes are just 40 orbits away from merging in this simulation of the light their environment emits as they dance.Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Download our astrophysics-themed valentines! Want more? Check out these two pages:NASA ValentinesSend-A-Card Related pages

This animation of supercomputer data takes you to the inner zone of the accretion disk of a stellar-mass black hole. Gas heated to 20 million degrees F as it spirals toward the black hole glows in low-energy, or soft, X-rays. Just before the gas plunges to the center, its orbital motion is approaching the speed of light. X-rays up to hundreds of times more powerful ("harder") than those in the disk arise from the corona, a region of tenuous and much hotter gas around the disk. Coronal temperatures reach billions of degrees. The event horizon is the boundary where all trajectories, including those of light, must go inward. Nothing, not even light, can pass outward across the event horizon and escape the black hole.Music: "Lost in Space" by Lars Leonhard, courtesy of artist.For complete transcript, click here. This animation of supercomputer data shows low-energy (soft) X-ray emission from the inner accretion disk of a stellar-mass black hole. Infalling gas is compressed and heated to millions of degrees as it swirls toward the inner edge of the disk, where the orbital speed approaches the speed of light. Magnetic fields threading through the gas are dramatically amplified. They affect the motion of the ionized gas, resulting in complex, turbulent motion. The left side of the disk appears brighter than the right because the energy of light emitted by gas approaching us (left) is increased by the Doppler shift, while the energy of light emitted in gas moving away from us (right) is decreased. We view the scene from a perspective 45 degrees above the accretion disk.Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/J. Schnittman, J. Krolik (JHU) and S. Noble (RIT) This animation of supercomputer data shows high-energy (hard) X-rays radiated from the corona region above the accretion disk of a stellar-mass black hole. The corona is a tenuous gas above and below the disk with temperatures reaching billions of degrees. The contrast between the left and right sides of the image, caused by the Doppler shift, is much less pronounced than in the disk movie. This is because the random motions of particles in the corona are as fast as their orbital speed, which reduces the contrast. Particles in the corona scatter soft X-rays from the disk and give them an energy boost, resulting in hard X-ray emission. We view the corona from a perspective 45 degrees above the plane of the accretion disk.Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/J. Schnittman, J. Krolik (JHU) and S. Noble (RIT) This animation of supercomputer data shows both low-energy X-rays (red) from the inner accretion disk and high-energy X-rays (blue) from the inner corona of a stellar-mass black hole. Particles in the corona scatter soft X-rays from the disk and give them an energy boost, resulting in hard X-ray emission. We view the scene from a perspective 45 degrees above the plane of the accretion disk.Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/J. Schnittman, J. Krolik (JHU) and S. Noble (RIT) This annotated image labels several features in the simulation, including the event horizon of the black hole. This illustration shows the approximate relationships between the black hole, its accretion disk (red), and the viewpoint and field of view of the simulation. This illustration shows the paths of soft X-rays (arrows) from the underside of the accretion disk that form rings seen near the black hole in the simulation. This illustration shows the approximate relationships between the black hole, its accretion disk and the corona region (blue). The arrows show a soft X-ray (red) traveling into the corona and striking a particle moving near the speed of light. The collision scatters the light and boosts it to much higher energy, making it a hard X-ray. This process is known as inverse Compton scattering. This animation illustrates inverse Compton scattering. In the corona region above a black hole's accretion disk, electrons and other particles move at appreciable fractions of the speed of light. When a low-energy X-ray (red) from the disk travels through this region, it may collide with one of the fast-moving particles (in this case, an electron). The impact scatters the light while simultaneously boosting its energy into the hard X-ray (blue) regime. A new study by astronomers at NASA, Johns Hopkins University and the Rochester Institute of Technology confirms long-held suspicions about how stellar-mass black holes produce their highest-energy light. By analyzing a supercomputer simulation of gas flowing into a black hole, the team finds they can reproduce a range of important X-ray features long observed in active black holes. Jeremy Schnittman, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., led the research.Black holes are the densest objects known. Stellar black holes form when massive stars run out of fuel and collapse, crushing up to 20 times the sun's mass into compact objects less than 75 miles (120 kilometers) wide. Gas falling toward a black hole initially orbits around it and then accumulates into a flattened disk. The gas stored in this disk gradually spirals inward and becomes greatly compressed and heated as it nears the center, ultimately reaching temperatures up to 20 million degrees Fahrenheit (12 million C), or some 2,000 times hotter than the sun's surface. It glows brightly in low-energy, or soft, X-rays.For more than 40 years, however, observations show that black holes also produce considerable amounts of "hard" X-rays, light with energy tens to hundreds of times greater than soft X-rays. This higher-energy light implies the presence of correspondingly hotter gas, with temperatures reaching billions of degrees. The new study involves a detailed computer simulation that simultaneously tracked the fluid, electrical and magnetic properties of the gas while also taking into account Einstein's theory of relativity. Using this data, the scientists developed tools to track how X-rays were emitted, absorbed, and scattered in and around the disk. The study demonstrates for the first time a direct connection between magnetic turbulence in the disk, the formation of a billion-degree corona above and below the disk, and the production of hard X-rays around an actively "feeding" black hole.Watch this video on YouTube. For More InformationSee [http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/black-hole-study.html](http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/black-hole-study.html) Related pages