Illustration of the binary system (IMAGE)

University of Turku

Illustration of the binary system

Caption

Artistic illustration of OJ287 as a binary black hole system. The secondary black hole of 150 million solar masses moves around the primary black hole of 18 billion solar masses. A disk of gas surrounds the latter. The secondary black hole is forced to impact on the accretion disk twice during its 12-year orbit. The impact produces a blue flash which was detected in February 2022. In addition, the impact also induces the secondary black hole to bright bursts of radiation several weeks earlier, and these bursts have also been detected as a direct signal from the secondary black hole.

Credit

AAS 2018

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Please credit the image to AAS 2018.

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