[ad_1]
NASA released new image of ripples in dust clouds created by unexpected event black hole X-ray burst observed in 2015.
The image, a combination of sightings taken by NASA’s workhorse Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Pan-STARRS optical telescope in Hawaii, shows blue concentric rings of dust around the V404 Cygni black hole (Chandra view) against a background of surrounding stars (seen by the Pan-STARRS telescope).
The concentric circles reveal interesting information about the dust clouds between Earth and V404 Cygni, NASA officials wrote in a report. Although the image is two-dimensional, the rings are actually scattered in space for the 7,800 light-years between Earth and the black hole.
Related: The jets of this black hole flicker like crazy because it distorts space-time
The rings reflect how the x-ray light emitted by the black hole during the burst propagated through the Milky Way galaxy and bounced off dust particles concentrated in the clouds inside, like sound waves creating echoes. The size of the rings therefore corresponds to the distance between the Earth and each cloud of dust, the smaller rings revealing the location of the most distant clouds and the larger rings representing those closer to our planet.
NASA explained in the statement that the so-called light echoes appear as narrow rings rather than wide rings or halos because the x-ray burst only lasted for a relatively short period of time.
The exceptionally powerful x-ray burst was first spotted on June 5, 2015 by the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, a NASA space telescope that studies gamma rays. Chandra subsequently observed the event between July 11 and July 25, 2015. However, the brightness of the event forced Chandra operators to place the V404 Cygni system between the telescope’s detectors to prevent damage to the telescope. instrument in the event of another powerful burst.
Just as a medical x-ray image reveals information about the properties of different body tissues, Chandra’s observations educate astronomers about the properties of dust clouds, NASA said in the statement. The researchers compared the brightness of x-ray light over a range of wavelengths with computer models of interstellar dust of various chemical compositions.
Because different materials absorb x-ray light differently, scientists were able to learn more about the makeup of these clouds. The team determined that the dust most likely contains a mixture of grains of graphite and silicate. In addition, by analyzing the inner rings with Chandra, the scientists found that the densities of the dust clouds were not uniform in all directions.
Several studies based on the first observations have been published since 2015.
V404 Cygni is a binary system made up of a black hole as heavy as nine suns and a companion star about half the mass of the sun. The black hole sucks in the star’s matter, which can be observed using X-rays emitted by the black hole’s accretion disk.
Follow Tereza Pultarova on Twitter @TerezaPultarova. follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
[ad_2]
Source link