Nasa finds mysterious ring formations around the black hole
So-called bursts of rays could be observed around the black hole V404 Cygni Nasa 7,800 light years away. They were expressed in the form of eight concentric rings around the center.
A few days ago, NASA an image of a black hole published that looks like a stereotype from a science fiction film. The interrupted and half-shifted circular lines mark a phenomenon that is known in research as the burst of rays, scattering effect or light echo.
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Matter gathers around a black hole
In fact, it has little to do with light. To make the rings visible, the NASA researchers used a method very similar to conventional X-rays. To do this, they used the specialized facilities of NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Swift Observatory, named after the late astronomer Neil Gehrels. They then combined the images from these two observatories with optical data from the Pan-STARRS telescope on Hawaii. This is how the impressive picture of the black hole was created.
What has been made visible here are the effects of various bursts of rays from the black hole, which is constantly absorbing matter from a nearby star that is said to have about half the mass of our sun. Parts of this radiating matter collect around the accretion disk of the black hole.
The accretion disk is a disk rotating around a central object that transports matter towards the center. It can consist of atomic gas, differently ionized gas or interstellar dust.
Ring radiation from the black hole works like reverse X-ray
The scattering effect now occurs because the X-rays of this matter hit clouds of dust on their way to Earth, which break the radiation. This is expressed optically in the form of a circle, whereby the rule is that the diameter of each ring allows conclusions to be drawn about how far the respective dust cloud is from the earth.
NASA discovered the radiation rings that have now been reported back in 2015. Then the recordings of a study conducted by Sebastian Heinz of the University of Wisconsin in the US state of the same name were added. Heinz and his team wanted to know what the clouds of dust that the radiation hit during their journey consist of. To do this, they use the radiation from the light echoes like a kind of inverted X-ray. This is a principle similar to the different absorption of X-rays in different parts of our body or our luggage, which provides information about their structure and composition.
The team found that the dust most likely contains mixtures of graphite and silicate grains. That was also previously suspected. The black hole V404 Cygni is located in the star system of the same name and is about 7,800 light years from Earth.
