[NASA] NASA’s IXPE Helps Researchers Determine Shape of Black Hole Corona

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New findings using data from NASA’s IXPE (

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) mission offer unprecedented insight into the shape and nature of a structure important to ****** holes called a corona.

A corona is a shifting plasma region that is part of the flow of matter onto a ****** *****, about which scientists have only a theoretical understanding. The new results reveal the corona’s shape for the first time, and may aid scientists’ understanding of the corona’s role in feeding and sustaining ****** holes.

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This illustration of material swirling around a ****** ***** highlights a particular feature, called the “corona,” that shines brightly in X-ray light. In this depiction, the corona can be seen as a purple haze floating above the underlying accretion disk, and extending slightly inside of its inner edge. The material within the inner accretion disk is incredibly hot and would glow with a blinding blue-white light, but here has been reduced in brightness to make the corona stand out with better contrast. Its purple ****** is purely illustrative, standing in for the X-ray glow that would not be obvious in visible light. The warp in the disk is a realistic representation of how the ****** *****’s immense gravity acts like an optical lens, distorting our view of the flat disk that encircles it.

NASA/Caltech-IPAC/Robert Hurt

Many ****** holes, so named because not even light can escape their titanic gravity, are surrounded by

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, debris-cluttered whirlpools of gas. Some ****** holes also have

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– ultra-powerful outbursts of matter hurled into space at high speed by ****** holes that are actively eating material in their surroundings.

Less well known, perhaps, is that snacking ****** holes, much like Earth’s Sun and other stars, also possess a superheated

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. While the Sun’s corona, which is the star’s outermost atmosphere, burns at roughly 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature of a ****** ***** corona is estimated at billions of degrees.

Astrophysicists

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among stellar-mass ****** holes – those formed by a star’s collapse – and supermassive ****** holes such as the one at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy.

“Scientists have long speculated on the makeup and geometry of the corona,” said Lynne Saade, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and lead author of the new findings. “Is it a sphere above and below the ****** *****, or an atmosphere generated by the accretion disk, or perhaps plasma located at the base of the jets?”

Enter IXPE, which specializes in

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, the characteristic of light that helps map the shape and structure of even the most powerful energy sources, illuminating their inner workings even when the objects are too small, bright, or distant to see directly. Just as we can safely observe the Sun’s corona during a

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, IXPE provides the means to clearly study the ****** *****’s accretion geometry, or the shape and structure of its accretion disk and related structures, including the corona.

“X-ray polarization provides a new way to examine ****** ***** accretion geometry,” Saade said. “If the accretion geometry of ****** holes is similar regardless of mass, we expect the same to be true of their polarization properties.”

IXPE demonstrated that, among all ****** holes for which coronal properties could be directly measured via polarization, the corona was found to be extended in the same direction as the accretion disk – providing, for the first time, clues to the corona’s shape and clear evidence of its relationship to the accretion disk. The results rule out the possibility that the corona is shaped like a lamppost hovering over the disk.  

The research team studied data from IXPE’s observations of 12 ****** holes, among them

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and

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, stellar-mass binary ****** ***** systems about 7,000 and 37,000 light-years from Earth, respectively, and LMC X-1 and LMC X-3, stellar-mass ****** holes in the Large Magellanic Cloud more than 165,000 light-years away. IXPE also observed a number of supermassive ****** holes, including the one at the center of the

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galaxy, 13 million light-years from Earth, and those in galaxies

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and

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, 47 million light-years away and nearly 62 million light-years away, respectively.

Stellar mass ****** holes typically have a mass roughly 10 to 30 times that of Earth’s Sun, whereas supermassive ****** holes may have a mass that is millions to tens of billions of times larger. Despite these vast differences in scale, IXPE data suggests both types of ****** holes create accretion disks of similar geometry.

That’s surprising, said Marshall astrophysicist Philip Kaaret, principal investigator for the IXPE mission, because the way the two types are fed is completely different.

“Stellar-mass ****** holes rip mass from their companion stars, whereas supermassive ****** holes devour everything around them,” he said. “Yet the accretion mechanism functions much the same way.”

That’s an exciting prospect, Saade said, because it suggests that studies of stellar-mass ****** holes – typically much closer to Earth than their much more massive cousins – can help shed new light on properties of supermassive ****** holes as well.

The team next hopes to make additional examinations of both types.

Saade anticipates there’s much more to glean from X-ray studies of these behemoths. “IXPE has provided the first opportunity in a long time for X-ray astronomy to reveal the underlying processes of accretion and unlock new findings about ****** holes,” she said.

The complete findings are available in the latest issue of

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.

More about IXPE

IXPE, which continues to provide unprecedented data enabling groundbreaking discoveries about celestial objects across the universe, is a ****** NASA and Italian Space Agency mission with partners and science collaborators in 12 countries. IXPE is led by Marshall. Ball Aerospace, headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, manages spacecraft operations together with the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder.

Learn more about IXPE’s ongoing mission here:

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Elizabeth Landau
NASA Headquarters
elizabeth.r*****@*****.tld
202-358-0845

Lane Figueroa
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
256-544-0034
lane.e*****@*****.tld

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Last Updated

Oct 17, 2024

Editor

Beth Ridgeway

Location

Marshall Space Flight Center

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