图示：宇宙早期的类星体

图示：宇宙早期的类星体

ByNASA中文

2022年2月22日 Illustration: An Early Quasar Illustration Credit & License: ESO, M. Kornmesser Explanation: What did the first quasars look like? The nearest quasars are now known to involve supermassive black holes in the centers of active galaxies. Gas and dust that falls toward a quasar glows brightly, sometimes outglowing the entire home galaxy. The quasars that formed in the first billion years of the universe are more mysterious, though. Featured, recent data has enabled an artist’s impression of an early-universe quasar as it might have been: centered on a massive black hole, surrounded by sheets of gas and an accretion disk, and expelling a powerful jet. Quasars are among the most distant objects we see and give humanity unique information about the early and intervening…

事件视界望远镜解析半人马座A黑洞的中心喷流

事件视界望远镜解析半人马座A黑洞的中心喷流

ByNASA中文

2021年8月4日 EHT Resolves Central Jet from Black Hole in Cen A Image Credit: Radboud University; CSIRO/ATNF/I.Feain et al., R.Morganti et al., N.Junkes et al.; ESO/WFI; MPIfR/ESO/APEX/A. Weiss et al.; NASA/CXC/CfA/R. Kraft et al.; TANAMI/C. Mueller et al.; EHT/M. Janssen et al. Explanation: How do supermassive black holes create powerful jets? To help find out, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) imaged the center of the nearby active galaxy Centaurus A. The cascade of featured inset images shows Cen A from it largest, taking up more sky than many moons, to its now finest, taking up only as much sky as an golf ball on the moon. The new image shows what may look like two jets — but is actually two sides of a single jet….

W200115：黑洞合并中子星的电脑模拟

W200115：黑洞合并中子星的电脑模拟

ByNASA中文

2021年7月14日 GW200115: Simulation of a Black Hole Merging with a Neutron Star Video Credit: Simulation: S.V. Chaurasia (Stockholm U.), T. Dietrich (Potsdam U. & MPIGP); Visualization: T. Dietrich (Potsdam U. & MPIGP), N. Fischer, S. Ossokine, H. Pfeiffer (MPIGP) Explanation: What happens when a black hole destroys a neutron star? Analyses indicate that just such an event created gravitational wave event GW200115, detected in 2020 January by LIGO and Virgo observatories. To better understand the unusual event, the featured visualization was created from a computer simulation. The visualization video starts with the black hole (about 6 times the Sun’s mass) and neutron star (about 1.5 times the Sun’s mass) circling each other, together emitting an increasing amount of gravitational radiation. The picturesque pattern of gravitational…

动画：黑洞如何摧毁恒星

动画：黑洞如何摧毁恒星

ByNASA中文

2021年04月27日 Animation: Black Hole Destroys Star Video Illustration Credit: DESY, Science Communication Lab Explanation: What happens if a star gets too close to a black hole? The black hole can rip it apart — but how? It’s not the high gravitational attraction itself that’s the problem — it’s the difference in gravitational pull across the star that creates the destruction. In the featured animated video illustrating this disintegration, you first see a star approaching the black hole. Increasing in orbital speed, the star’s outer atmosphere is ripped away during closest approach. Much of the star’s atmosphere disperses into deep space, but some continues to orbit the black hole and forms an accretion disk. The animation then takes you into the accretion disk while looking toward…

黑洞世界的双重翘曲

黑洞世界的双重翘曲

ByNASA中文

2021年04月16日 The Doubly Warped World of Binary Black Holes Scientific Visualization Credit: NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center, Jeremy Schnittman and Brian P. Powell – Text: Francis Reddy Explanation: Light rays from accretion disks around a pair of orbiting supermassive black holes make their way through the warped space-time produced by extreme gravity in this stunning computer visualization. The simulated accretion disks have been given different false color schemes, red for the disk surrounding a 200-million-solar-mass black hole, and blue for the disk surrounding a 100-million-solar-mass black hole. That makes it easier to track the light sources, but the choice also reflects reality. Hotter gas gives off light closer to the blue end of the spectrum and material orbiting smaller black holes experiences stronger gravitational effects…

星系M87、喷流与著名黑洞

星系M87、喷流与著名黑洞

ByNASA中文

2021年04月15日 The Galaxy, the Jet, and a Famous Black Hole Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration Explanation: Bright elliptical galaxy Messier 87 (M87) is home to the supermassive black hole captured by planet Earth’s Event Horizon Telescope in the first ever image of a black hole. Giant of the Virgo galaxy cluster about 55 million light-years away, M87 is the large galaxy rendered in blue hues in this infrared image from the Spitzer Space telescope. Though M87 appears mostly featureless and cloud-like, the Spitzer image does record details of relativistic jets blasting from the galaxy’s central region. Shown in the inset at top right, the jets themselves span thousands of light-years. The brighter jet seen on the right is approaching and close to…

星系M106

星系M106

ByNASA中文

2021年04月09日 Messier 106 Image Credit: NASA, Hubble Legacy Archive, Kitt Peak National Observatory; Amateur Data & Processing Copyright: Robert Gendler Explanation: Close to the Great Bear (Ursa Major) and surrounded by the stars of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici), this celestial wonder was discovered in 1781 by the metric French astronomer Pierre Mechain. Later, it was added to the catalog of his friend and colleague Charles Messier as M106. Modern deep telescopic views reveal it to be an island universe – a spiral galaxy around 30 thousand light-years across located only about 21 million light-years beyond the stars of the Milky Way. Along with a bright central core, this stunning galaxy portrait, a composite of image data from amateur and professional telescopes, highlights youthful blue…

NGC 1365: 壮丽的宇宙岛

NGC 1365: 壮丽的宇宙岛

ByNASA中文

2021年01月08日 NGC 1365: Majestic Island Universe Image Credit & Copyright: Mike Selby, Leonardo Orazi Explanation: Barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is truly a majestic island universe some 200,000 light-years across. Located a mere 60 million light-years away toward the chemical constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is a dominant member of the well-studied Fornax Cluster of galaxies. This impressively sharp color image shows the intense, reddish star forming regions near the ends of central bar and along the spiral arms, with details of the obscuring dust lanes cutting across the galaxy’s bright core. At the core lies a supermassive black hole. Astronomers think NGC 1365’s prominent bar plays a crucial role in the galaxy’s evolution, drawing gas and dust into a star-forming maelstrom and ultimately feeding material…