NASA has captured the appearance of a giant ring around a distant black hole. The image was obtained by NASA while observing a black hole that is part of a binary system called the V404 Cygni.
The Cygni V404 system, as quoted from Slashgear, is located 7,800 light -years from Earth. The black hole actively sucks dust and material from its companion star.
For a companion star, it is about half the mass of the Sun. Although NASA could not see the black hole itself, material collected from its companion star has formed a disk around the black hole.
The image of the ring is visible because it shines in x-rays. An x-ray blast from Cygni’s V404 was discovered on June 5, 2015, using the Swift Observatory. This high -energy ring is produced by what is known as an echo of light. An echo of light is produced when x-rays explode from a black hole bouncing off a cloud of dust between V404 Cygni and Earth.
NASA states that dust clouds in space are not like the dust we might clean around a house, but more like smoke made from small solid particles. NASA images show a concentric ring of x-rays emitted from the V404 Cygni observed in 2015 reflected from different dust clouds.
In NASA images, the display is simplified to show only four of the eight rings. Scientists analyzed 50 observations made using Swift in 2015 made between June 30 and August 25.
The ring is interesting because it allows astronomers to study in detail the behavior of black holes and scenery between V404 Cygni and Earth. According to NASA, the diameter of the ring in X-rays highlights the distance to the dust cloud that is affected by the light.
As the clouds get closer to the Earth, the rings appear larger and vice versa. The narrower ring showed an x-ray burst lasting for a shorter period of time than the wider ring.
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