Wednesday, October 24, 2012

NASA Satellite Sees Black Hole Belching Out Hundred-Million-Degree X-rays

NASA Satellite Sees Black Hole Belching Out Hundred-Million-Degree X-rays:
The Bad Astronomer writes "NASA's NuSTAR satellite, designed to detect cosmic X-rays, detected a flare of high-energy emission coming from the Milky Way galaxy's central supermassive black hole. The X-rays were the dying gasp of a small gas cloud being torn apart, heated to a hundred million degrees, and then falling into the black hole itself. Events like this are relatively uncommon, so it's fortunate NuSTAR happened to be observing the black hole when it flared."




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