Heavy Black Hole Jets in 4U1630 47
Credit & Copyright: NASA,
CXC, M. Weiss
Explanation:
What are black hole jets made of?
Many black holes in stellar systems are surely surrounded by disks of gas and
plasma gravitationally pulled
from a close binary star companion.
Some of this material, after approaching the
black hole,
ends up being expelled from the star system in
powerful jets
emanating from the poles of the
spinning black hole.
Recent
evidence indicates that these jets are composed not only
electrons and
protons,
but also the nuclei of heavy elements such as
iron and
nickel.
The
discovery was made in system 4U1630-47 using
CSIROs
Compact Array
of radio telescopes in eastern
Australia, and the
European Space Agency's Earth-orbiting
XMM-Newton satellite.
The
4U1630-47 star system is
depicted above in an artist's illustration,
with a large blue star on the right and jets emanating from a black hole in the center
of the
accretion disc on the left.
Although the
4U1630-47 star system is thought to contain only a small
black hole -- a
few times the mass of our Sun -- the implications of the results may be larger: that
black holes of larger sizes might
also be emitting jets of massive nuclei into the cosmos.
Click Hyperspace:
Random APOD Generator
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
