动画：黑洞周围的旋涡状吸积盘

2019 August 20

Animation: Spiral Disk around a Black Hole
Illustrated Animation Credit: ESA, NASA, Hubble, M. Kornmesser

Explanation: What would it look like to orbit a black hole? Many black holes are surrounded by swirling pools of gas known as accretion disks. These disks can be extremely hot, and much of the orbiting gas will eventually fall through the black hole’s event horizon — where it will never been seen again. The featured animation is an artist’s rendering of the curious disk spiraling around the supermassive black hole at the center of spiral galaxy NGC 3147. Gas at the inner edge of this disk is so close to the black hole that it moves unusually fast — at 10 percent of the speed of light. Gas this fast shows relativistic beaming, making the side of the disk heading toward us appear significantly brighter than the side moving away. The animation is based on images of NGC 3147 made recently with the Hubble Space Telescope.

动画：黑洞周围的旋涡状吸积盘
图示动画影像来源: ESA, NASA, Hubble, M. Kornmesser

说明：环绕黑洞运行看起来会是怎样的景象？许多黑洞都被名为吸积盘的旋涡状气体团所包围。这些吸积盘可能非常炽热，大部分环绕黑洞运行的气体最终会落入黑洞的事件视界，之后便再也看不到了。这幅精彩的动画是一位艺术家的作品，它呈现了环绕旋涡星系NGC 3147中心的特大质量黑洞旋转的奇特吸积盘。这个吸积盘内部边缘的气体距离黑洞如此之近，以至于它的运行速度异常快速，相当于光速的10%。这种速度的气体显示了相对论性射束，使得朝向我们的吸积盘一侧看起来比远离我们一侧的要明亮得多。这段动画是基于最近哈勃太空望远镜拍摄的NGC3147影像制作而成。