Black Hole Week 2022

May 2, 2022 - May 6, 2022

Monday, May 2

Video: Black Hole Orrery

This visualization shows 22 X-ray binaries in our Milky Way galaxy and its nearest neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud, that host confirmed stellar-mass black holes.

News Feature: NASA Visualization Rounds Up the Best-Known Black Hole Systems

Nearby black holes and their stellar companions form an astrophysical rogues’ gallery in this new NASA visualization.

Tuesday, May 3

Tumblr: Our Weird and Wonderful Galaxy of Black Holes

Black holes are hard to find. They are objects with such strong gravity that light can’t escape them, so we have to rely on clues from their surroundings to find them. Learn more in this post about how most of the ones discovered in our galaxy are found with a star, each circling around the other.

Wednesday, May 4

News feature: New NASA Black Hole Sonifications with a Remix

Two new data sonifications bring sounds to black holes featuring the black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster and the black hole in Messier 87, or M87.

Wallpaper downloads: Black Hole Safety Desktop and Phone Wallpapers

Are you ready to make our black hole traveler an even bigger part of your daily life? Wishing that black holes actually WERE portals to dimensions filled with unicorns and space potatoes? Download these phone and desktop wallpapers to fill your screens.

Wallpaper downloads: Black Hole Desktop and Phone Wallpapers

While black holes can’t emit their own light, matter surrounding and falling toward it can create quite a light show. Here you’ll find a collection of data visualizations, illustrations, and telescope images of black hole environments.

Thursday, May 5

News feature: NASA’s Swift Tracks Potential Magnetic Flip of Monster Black Hole (Spanish translation)

A rare and enigmatic outburst from a galaxy 236 million light-years away may have been sparked by a magnetic reversal, a spontaneous flip of the magnetic field surrounding its central black hole.

Video: A Black Hole's Magnetic Reversal

Explore the unusual eruption of 1ES 1927+654, a galaxy located 236 million light-years away in the constellation Draco. A sudden reversal of the magnetic field around its million-solar-mass black hole may have triggered the outburst.