Thick Accretion Disk Around Supermassive Black Hole (IMAGE)

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Thick Accretion Disk Around Supermassive Black Hole

Caption

In this artist's rendering, a thick accretion disk has formed around a supermassive black hole following the tidal disruption of a star that wandered too close. Stellar debris has fallen toward the black hole and collected into a thick chaotic disk of hot gas. Flashes of X-ray light near the center of the disk result in light echoes that allow astronomers to map the structure of the funnel-like flow, revealing for the first time strong gravity effects around a normally quiescent black hole.

Credit

NASA/Swift/Aurore Simonnet, Sonoma State University

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