Tag Archive for 'Black hole corona'

In this artist’s concept, matter is stripped from a white dwarf (sphere at lower right) orbiting within the innermost accretion disk surrounding 1ES 1927+654’s supermassive black hole. Image credit: NASA / Aurore Simonnet, Sonoma State University.

XMM-Newton Detects Mysterious X-Ray Oscillations in Supermassive Black Hole

Jan 14, 2025 by News Staff

In 2018, astronomers observed that the corona of 1ES 1927+654, an actively accreting, 1.4-million-solar-mass black hole located in a galaxy around 270...

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...

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...

This two-panel illustration shows a black hole surrounded by a disk of gas, before and after the disk is partially dispersed. In the left panel, the ball of white light above the black hole is the black hole corona, a collection of ultra-hot gas particles that forms as gas from the disk falls into the black hole. The streak of debris falling toward the disk is what remains of a star that was torn apart by the black hole’s gravity. The right panel shows the black hole after the debris from the star has dispersed some of the gas in the disk, causing the corona to disappear. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Colliding Star Destroys Supermassive Black Hole’s Corona in Distant Galaxy

Jul 17, 2020 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers has watched as an X-ray corona of a supermassive black hole in the active galactic nucleus 1ES 1927+654 was abruptly...

This illustration shows the surroundings of a black hole feeding on ambient gas as mapped using ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory. Image credit: ESA.

Astronomers Map Surroundings of Supermassive Black Hole

Jan 22, 2020 by News Staff

As material spirals towards a black hole, it is heated up and emits X-rays that, in turn, echo and reverberate as they interact with nearby gas. These...

Dai et al used Chandra to measure the spin of five quasars. Gravitational lensing of the light from each of these black holes by an intervening galaxy has created multiple images of each quasar, as shown by these Chandra images of four of the targets. Image credit: NASA / CXC / University of Oklahoma / Dai et al.

Chandra Uses Gravitational Lens to Capture Spinning Black Holes

Jul 5, 2019 by News Staff

By combining the capability of NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory with the power of a natural phenomenon called gravitational lensing, a team of astronomers...

In this illustration, MAXI J1820+070 pulls material off a neighboring star and into an accretion disk; above the disk is a region of subatomic particles called the corona. Image credit: Aurore Simonnet / NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

NICER Observes ‘X-Ray Echoes’ of Nearby Stellar-Mass Black Hole

Feb 1, 2019 by News Staff

Astrophysicists using NASA’s Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) have detected X-rays from a stellar-mass black hole called MAXI J1820+070...

An artist’s rendering of the corona around a black hole. Image credit: RIKEN.

Supermassive Black Holes Have Weaker Coronal Magnetic Field Than Expected

Dec 31, 2018 by Enrico de Lazaro

Supermassive black holes that lurk at the center of most galaxies are surrounded by coronas — mysterious features that are sources of highly energetic...