'Tightly bound' stars seen locked in 'diabolic strip waltz' More news of the stars today: snappers armed with extremely powerful lenses have secured pics of "a very intimate couple", "tightly bound" and "dancing around each other in a diabolic waltz" as the darker, dominant one strips the other. Artist's impression of the X-1 black hole / Wolf-Rayet binary in NGC 300. Credit: ESO …
Given how speccly ultra long range pics tend to be, that's a very detailed image. How much 'enhancing' has been done?
Also has there actually been any explanation of how black holes are able to project those narrow matter/light streams when they suck up objects of huge mass?
@abigsmurf
The jets are (probably, everything about black-holes is conjecture) a result of the massive magnetic fields generated by black-holes. Just as the Sun has a powerful and complex magnetic fields, so do black-holes.
These magnetic fields fling charged particles out along the axis of rotation.
The magnetic force is several orders of magnitude more powerful than the force of gravity, which seems obvious when you think that a little fridge magnet can overcome the combined gravitational force of the Earth. This is what allows the black hole to force some particles away from it, while consuming others.
The image will be computer generated, you'd never optically resolve anything this small at this distance.
The data showing how the system is behaving will come from high resolution spectrometer observations showing the doppler shifts of light emitted by the various objects and gasses involved over time. The image will be based on this with a good dollop of artistic license.
I think the jets are due to the rotation of the black hole 'corkscrewing' its magnetic field lines which then catch some of the inflowing ionised material and accelerate it back out before it reaches the event horizon.
The event horizon will be relatively small for a solar mass black hole, about a third of the diameter of the sun if I remember correctly.
"Given how speccly ultra long range pics tend to be, that's a very detailed image. How much 'enhancing' has been done?"
Hover over it and you'll see the alt text says "Artist's impression of...". It's quite obviously a rendering done for clarification.
"Also has there actually been any explanation of how black holes are able to project those narrow matter/light streams when they suck up objects of huge mass?"
Yes, it's a well-explained phenomena in astrophysics circles. the plume of ejecta isn't from within the black hole itself, it's caused by the funneling effect of a doughnut-shaped ring of cooler gas and dust that surrounds the black hole, and is an artefact of the temperature difference. It would typically move at some million or so miles per hour.
From common sense I can tell you the image isn't real and is entirely an artists impression. Shame the article fails to mention this!
If it were real, it would be headline news world over. The first direct image of a black hole! Eating a neighbouring star!!! Emitting jets!!!!! *explodes*
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