RAS | NASA | JPL-Caltech | NuSTAR | 2015 Dec 17
[img3="Galaxy 1068 is shown in visible light and X-rays in this composite image. High-energy X-rays (magenta) captured by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, are overlaid on visible-light images from both NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The X-ray light is coming from an active supermassive black hole, also known as a quasar, in the center of the galaxy. This supermassive black hole has been extensively studied due to its relatively close proximity to our galaxy.The most massive black holes in the universe are often encircled by thick, doughnut-shaped disks of gas and dust. This deep-space doughnut material ultimately feeds and nourishes the growing black holes tucked inside.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Roma Tre Univ."]http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/ima ... 057_ip.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]
Until recently, telescopes weren't able to penetrate some of these doughnuts, also known as tori.
"Originally, we thought that some black holes were hidden behind walls or screens of material that could not be seen through," said Andrea Marinucci of the Roma Tre University in Italy, lead author of a new Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society study describing results from NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton space observatory.
With its X-ray vision, NuSTAR recently peered inside one of the densest of these doughnuts known to surround a supermassive black hole. This black hole lies at the center of a well-studied spiral galaxy called NGC 1068, located 47 million light-years away in the Cetus constellation.
The observations revealed a clumpy, cosmic doughnut.
"The rotating material is not a simple, rounded doughnut as originally thought, but clumpy," said Marinucci.
Doughnut-shaped disks of gas and dust around supermassive black holes were first proposed in the mid-1980s to explain why some black holes are hidden behind gas and dust, while others are not. The idea is that the orientation of the doughnut relative to Earth affects the way we perceive a black hole and its intense radiation. If the doughnut is viewed edge-on, the black hole is blocked. If the doughnut is viewed face-on, the black hole and its surrounding, blazing materials can be detected. This idea is referred to as the unified model because it neatly joins together the different black hole types, based solely upon orientation. ...
NuSTAR catches the unveiling nucleus of NGC 1068 - A. Marinucci et al
- Monthly Notices of the RAS 456(1):L94 (2016 Feb 11) DOI: 10.1093/mnrasl/slv178
arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1511.03503 > 11 Nov 2015