APOD
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
Spiraling Supermassive Black Holes
Explanation: Do black holes glow when they collide? When merging, co-orbiting black holes are sure to emit a burst of unusual gravitational radiation , but will they emit light , well before that, if they are surrounded by gas ? To help find out, astrophysicists created a sophisticated computer simulation. The simulation and featured resulting video accurately depicts two spiraling supermassive black hole s, including the effects of Einstein's general relativity on the surrounding gas and light. The video first shows the system from the top, and later from the side where unusual gravitational lens distortions are more prominent. Numerical results indicate that gravitational and magnetic forces should energize the gas to emit high-energy light from the ultraviolet to the X-ray . The emission of such light may enable humanity to detect and study supermassive black hole pair s well before they spiral together.
News: Four new gravitational-wave emitting black hole mergers discovered.
Open Science: Browse 1,800+ codes in the Astrophysics Source Code Library
| Date | December 3, 2018 |
|---|---|
| Credit | Video Credit: NASA 's Goddard Space Flight Center ; Music: In the Hall of the Mountain King by Edvard Grieg |
| Authors & editors: | Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP) |
| A service of: |
ASD at NASA / GSFC, NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U. |