A new immersive, 360-degree, ultra-high-definition visualization provides more details of what NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory sees in X-rays around the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy.
By combining NASA Ames supercomputer simulations with Chandra data, the visualization shows the effects of dozens of massive stellar giants, called Wolf-Rayet stars, with fierce winds blowing off their surfaces in the region a few light years away from the supermassive black hole known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*).
These Wolf-Rayet winds provide a buffet of material for the supermassive black hole to potentially feed upon.
Viewers can observe dense clumps of material streaming toward Sgr A*. These clumps formed when winds from the massive stars near Sgr A* collide.
Along with watching the motion of these clumps, the viewers can watch as relatively low-density gas falls toward Sgr A*.
In this visualization, the blue and cyan colors represent X-ray emission from hot gas, with temperatures of tens of millions of degrees; red shows ultraviolet emission from moderately dense regions of cooler gas, with temperatures of tens of thousands of degrees; and yellow shows of the cooler gas with the highest densities.
A collection of X-ray-emitting gas is seen to move slowly when it is far away from Sgr A*, and then pick up speed and whip around the viewer as it comes inwards.
Sometimes clumps of gas will collide with gas ejected by other stars, resulting in a flash of X-rays when the gas is heated up, and then it quickly cools down.
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope produced this composite image of the central region of our Milky Way Galaxy. Note that the center of the Galaxy is located within the bright white region to the right of and just below the middle of the image. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ESA / CXC / STScI.
Farther away from the viewer, the movie also shows collisions of fast stellar winds producing X-rays.
These collisions are thought to provide the dominant source of hot gas that is seen by Chandra.
When an outburst occurs from gas very near the black hole, the ejected gas collides with material flowing away from the massive stars in winds, pushing this material backwards and causing it to glow in X-rays. When the outburst dies down the winds return to normal and the X-rays fade.
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Christopher M.P. Russell et al. 2017. Modelling the thermal X-ray emission around the Galactic Centre from colliding Wolf-Rayet winds. MNRAS 464 (4): 4958-4965; doi: 10.1093/mnras/stw2584
