The nearby black holes and their stellar counterparts created a gallery of astrophysical rogues in this new NASA demonstration.
Stars born more than 20 times the size of the Sun end their life as dark holes. As the name implies, dark holes do not light up by themselves because nothing can escape them, not even light. Until 2015, when astronomers first discovered black holes in space waves called gravitational waves, the main way to find these ebony mysteries was to search through binary systems where they encountered associated stars. And the best way to do that was to look at X-rays.
This view shows 22 X-rays in our Milky Way galaxy and its immediate neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a host that ensures dark stellar-mass holes. Systems from the same body scale, reflect their diversity. Their orbital movements are accelerated by nearly 22,000 times, and the viewing angles are multiplied by the way we see them on Earth.
Black hole
When paired with a star, a black hole can collect objects in two ways. In most cases, a stream of gas can flow from a star to a black hole. In others, like the first certified black hole system, the Cygnus X-1, the star produces a dense outburst called a stellar wind, which collects a large amount of gravitational force on the black hole. To date, there is no clear consensus on which mode to use GRS 1915, a large mid-range view system.
As it reaches the black hole, the gas goes in orbit and forms a wide, flat structure called the accretion disk. GRS 1915’s accretion disk may extend over 50 million miles (80 million km), greater than the distance between Mercury and the Sun. The gas on the disk heats up as it slowly penetrates inside, glows visually, ultraviolet, and finally X-ray.
The colors of the star range from blue-white to red, representing temperatures ranging from 5 times as much as 45% cooler than our Sun. Because accretion disks reach even higher temperatures, they use a different color scheme.
Although black holes are shown on the scales indicating their masses, they are all shown larger than real. The black hole of the Cygnus X-1 weighs about 21 times as much as the Sun, but its location – called the horizon of its event covers only 77 miles (124 km). The spheres are large and cover the visible distortion that can produce the effects of gravity in dark holes.
