Hot gas whirls into a supermassive black hole
Hot gas falls towards the centre of a supermassive black hole in this first X-ray image of the effect. The picture combines optical data from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile in gold with a blue X-ray inset from the Chandra space telescope. The haze of blue light shows hot gas around the black hole, which lies at the heart of a galaxy called NGC 3115.
The researchers mapped this hot gas to determine where it begins to fall towards the black hole, a boundary called the Bondi radius. The gas begins to get hotter and brighter at this radius, and the Chandra image shows this occurs some 700 light years from the black hole. This suggests the black hole weighs about 2 billion suns.
Hot gas whirls into a supermassive black hole
Reviewed by Mnz
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Reviewed by Mnz
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11:35 AM
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