Tag Archive for 'Accretion disk'

Ammonia gas infalling into an accretion disk feeding the protostar HW2. Image credit: NSF / AUI / NSF / NRAO / B. Saxton.

New Observations Shed More Light on Formation of Massive Stars

May 6, 2025 by News Staff

Astronomers using NSF’s Very Large Array (VLA) have spotted the huge flow of gas near HW2 — a massive protostar located 2,283 light-years away...

This artist’s concept portrays the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, known as Sagittarius A*. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Ralf Crawford, STScI.

Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole is More Active than Previously Thought

Feb 19, 2025 by News Staff

The accretion disk orbiting Sagittarius A* is emitting a constant stream of flares with no periods of rest, according to an analysis of new data from the...

An artist’s concept of Messier 77, featuring its powerful black hole and accretion disk, and never before seen polarization in water masers outside of our Milky Way Galaxy. Image credit: NSF / AUI / NRAO / S. Dagnello.

Astronomers Spot Magnetic Filaments in Accretion Disk around Messier 77’s Central Black Hole

Dec 11, 2024 by News Staff

Messier 77 is a well-known, relatively nearby, bright spiral galaxy with a supermassive black hole at its center. An artist’s concept of Messier 77,...

An artist’s depiction of the X-ray binary system 4U 1820-30 in the core of the globular cluster NGC 6624. Image credit: NASA.

NICER X-ray Telescope Discovers Fast-Spinning Neutron Star

Oct 29, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

A neutron star in the X-ray binary system 4U 1820-30 spins 716 times per second, making it one of the fastest-spinning objects ever observed, according...

This artist’s concept shows the possible locations of iron revealed in XRISM’s X-ray spectrum of NGC 4151. Image credit: Conceptual Image Lab, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

XRISM Detects Iron in Accretion Disk around NGC 4151’s Supermassive Black Hole

May 8, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

NGC 4151 is a spiral galaxy located some 62 million light-years away in the northern constellation of Canes Venatici. This artist’s concept shows the...

This image from the Event Horizon Telescope shows the polarized view of Sagittarius A*; the lines overlaid on this image mark the orientation of polarization, which is related to the magnetic field around the shadow of the black hole. Image credit: EHT Collaboration.

Event Horizon Telescope Observes Twisted Magnetic Field around Milky Way’s Central Black Hole

Mar 27, 2024 by News Staff

According to astronomers’ best models of black hole evolution, the magnetic fields in the accretion disk need to be strong enough to push the accreting...

This image of the exceptional quasar J0529-4351 is from the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey DR10; a neighboring M star appears in red. Image credit: Wolf et al., doi: 10.1038/s41550-024-02195-x.

Astronomers Discover Most Luminous Quasar Ever Observed

Feb 21, 2024 by Sergio Prostak

The black hole in the newly-discovered quasar SMSS J052915.80-435152.0 (hereafter called J0529-4351) accretes around one solar mass per day onto an existing...

This artist impression shows ultra-fast winds blasting out from the center of galaxy Markarian 817. These winds, moving at many millions of km per hour, clear out interstellar gas from a vast region of space. Without this gas, the galaxy can’t form new stars and the black hole in the galactic center has little left to eat. The inset shows what is happening at galaxy’s heart. A supermassive black hole draws in gas from its surroundings, which forms a hot, brightly lit accretion disk (orange). The cause of the winds (white) is magnetic fields within the disk, which fling particles out in all directions at incredibly high speeds. These winds effectively block out X-rays (blue) which are sent out by the extremely hot plasma surrounding the black hole, called the corona. Zak et al. caught Markarian 817 blasting out ultra-fast winds using ESA’s X-ray telescope XMM-Newton. Lasting for around a year, the winds will have significantly affected star formation in the galaxy. The fact that the black hole at the center of the galaxy was showing rather average activity levels before producing the winds suggests that ultra-fast black hole winds are much more common than previously thought. In other words, black holes and their host galaxies strongly affect each other’s evolution. Image credit: ESA / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

XMM-Newton Detects Ultra-Fast Black Hole Wind in Markarian 817

Feb 1, 2024 by News Staff

Markarian 817 is a Seyfert 1 galaxy located 430 million light-years away in the constellation of Draco. Also known as Mrk 817 or QSO J1436+5847, it hosts...

Left: this image from the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on ESO’s Very Large Telescope shows the parent cloud LHA 120-N 180B in which the HH 1177 system was first observed. Center: this image shows the jets that accompany HH 1177; the top part of the jet is aimed slightly towards us and thus blueshifted; the bottom one is receding from us and thus redshifted. Right: this image from ALMA shows the rotating disk around the star, similarly with sides moving towards and away from us. Image credit: ESO / ALMA / NAOJ / NRAO / McLeod et al.

ALMA Spots Circumstellar Disk around Young Star in Large Magellanic Cloud

Nov 29, 2023 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have detected a rotating gaseous structure around an extragalactic massive young...

Schematic representation of the tilted accretion disk model. The black hole spin axis is assumed to be straight up and down in this illustration. The jet direction points almost perpendicular to the disk plane. The misalignment between the black hole spin axis and disk rotation axis triggers the precession of the disk and jet. Image credit: Cui et al. / Intouchable Lab@Openverse / Zhejiang Lab.

Messier 87’s Supermassive Black Hole is Indeed Spinning, Astronomers Say

Sep 27, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

Messier 87 is a giant elliptical galaxy located some 53 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. In April 2019, astronomers from the Event...

This artist’s impression shows the millisecond pulsar PSR J1023+0038 stealing gas from its companion star. Image credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser.

Matter Ejections Explain Peculiar High-Low Mode Switches in Distant Millisecond Pulsar

Aug 30, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

The millisecond pulsar PSR J1023+0038 is known to switch between two brightness modes almost constantly, something that until now has been an enigma. This...

Astronomers Detect Emission from Outskirts of Supermassive Black Hole’s Accretion Disk

Aug 28, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

Active galactic nuclei are primarily powered by a supermassive black hole lying at the center of a host galaxy that is accreting matter from its vicinity....

The hyperluminous star-forming galaxy GN-z11 hosts an accreting black hole. Image credit: NASA / ESA / P. Oesch, Yale University / G. Brammer, STScI / P. van Dokkum, Yale University / G. Illingworth, University of California, Santa Cruz / Sci.News.

Webb Detects Small and Vigorous Black Hole in Early Universe

Jun 6, 2023 by Sergio Prostak

The newly-discovered black hole resides in the hyperluminous galaxy GN-z11 at a redshift of 11 and could have originated from a stellar mass seed at redshifts...

Kosec et al. mapped the winds associated with the accretion disk around Hercules X-1, a binary system located 6,600 parsecs (21,526 light-years) away in the constellation of Hercules. Image credit: Jose-Luis Olivares, MIT / D. Klochkov, ESA.

Astronomers Map Colossal ‘Disk Winds’ in Hercules X-1

Apr 12, 2023 by News Staff

Hercules X-1 is an X-ray binary system in which a neutron star is drawing material away from a Sun-like star. This neutron star’s accretion disk is unique...

A schematic view of the history of the accretion disk and the flyby object: the three plots starting from the bottom left are snapshots from the numerical simulation, capturing the system right at the flyby event, 4,000 years after, and 8,000 years after, respectively; the top right image is from the ALMA observations, showing the disk with spirals and the two objects around it, corresponding to the system at 12,000 years after the flyby event. Image credit: Lu et al., doi: 10.1038/s41550-022-01681-4.

ALMA Images Spiral Protostellar Disk near Milky Way’s Center

Jun 21, 2022 by News Staff

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have discovered a massive accretion disk with two spiral arms around a 32-solar-mass...

An artist’s impression of the binary system MAXI J1820+070. Image credit: John Paice.

Warped Accretion Disk Spotted around Stellar-Mass Black Hole

Oct 28, 2021 by News Staff

Variations in the brightness of light seen from around a stellar-mass black hole in the binary system MAXI J1820+070 were caused by a huge warp in its...

An artist’s impression of a white dwarf -- in this case a white dwarf in the MV Lyrae system -- accreting as it draws in material from a companion star. Image credit: Helena Uthas.

TESS Finds Pulsating White Dwarf in TW Pictoris System

Oct 19, 2021 by News Staff

The white dwarf observed by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a member of the binary system TW Pictoris and is known to be accreting...

Wilkins et al. observed bright flares of X-ray emissions, produced as gas falls into a supermassive black hole in I Zwicky 1; the flares echoed off of the gas falling into the black hole, and as the flares were subsiding, short flashes of X-rays were seen -- corresponding to the reflection of the flares from the far side of the disk, bent around the black hole by its strong gravitational field. Image credit: Dan Wilkins.

Astronomers Detect Light Echoes Coming from Behind Supermassive Black Hole

Jul 30, 2021 by News Staff

Using ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s NuSTAR space telescopes, astronomers have observed X-ray flares emitted from around the supermassive black hole in...

An artist’s impression of a stellar-mass black hole surrounded by a disk of gas and plasma gravitationally pulled from a close binary star companion. Image credit: NASA / CXC / M. Weiss.

Astrophysicists Suggest New Way to Detect Stellar-Mass Black Holes

Sep 22, 2020 by Sergio Prostak

An analysis of archival X-ray data from NASA’s Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer has revealed a clear separation between the characteristics of stellar-mass...

An artist’s impression of the immediate vicinity of the massive protostar G358.93-0.03-MM1. Image credit: Xi Chen, Guangzhou University / Zhi-Yuan Ren, National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Science.

Astronomers Detect Spiral-Arm Structures around High-Mass Protostar

Jul 14, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

New observations of a high-mass protostar in the massive star-forming region G358.93-0.03 shed light on how these young stellar objects accumulate their...