Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Heavy Black Hole Jets in 4U1630-47

NASA ^ | November 20, 2013 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

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 CSIRO’s 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.

[SunkenCiv]

[Illustration Credit: NASA, CXC, M. Weiss]

[SunkenCiv]

The Big One

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[no-to-illegals]

A truly beautiful picture, SunkenCiv. What we, as humans, know fills one book of perhaps ten pages. What we, as humans, do not know fills infinite books of infinite pages in infinite libraries. (imho)

[ßuddaßudd]

Awesome background image, thanks...

[colorado tanker]

Wow, that black hole is chowing down on the blue star for breakfast, lunch AND dinner.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks for the replies. Y'know, this is also a good one for the String Theory list...

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[The Cajun]

that black holes of larger sizes might also be emitting jets of massive nuclei into the cosmos.

That should be leaving a mark somewhere.

[SunkenCiv]

Sounds like the whole works is coming home from Taco Bell.

[no-to-illegals]

Thank you! I’ll give it a look on the “List Topics”