Published on StarDate Online (https://legacy.stardate.org)

Home > Loud Black Hole

Loud Black Hole [1]

X-rays from a disk of hot gas around a supermassive black hole in NGC 1275 push back at gas that's falling into the black hole, creating sound waves. Although the waves are far below the range of human hearing, astronomers recently pitched them up [2] 57 to 58 octaves to make them audible. The black hole is about 800 million times the mass of the Sun. NGC 1275 is at the center of the Perseus Cluster, one of the largest galaxy clusters yet seen. Hot gas in the cluster falls into NGC 1275, where it's funneled toward a disk of superhot gas around the black hole. This composite image includes visible light captured by the Sloan Sky Survey, X-rays (blue) from Chandra X-Ray Observatory, and radio waves (pink) from the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico. [Marie-Lou Gendron-Marsolais (Université de Montréal), Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo (Université de Montréal), Maxime Pivin Lapointe [3]]

Moaning Black Hole
composite image of ngc 1275, a giant galaxy in the middle of the perseus cluster
  • About StarDate
  • Underwriting
  • SkyTips Sign-Up
  • Change mailing address
  • Privacy Policy
  • Copyright and Usage
  • Contact

StarDate is brought to you in part through the generous support of our underwriters.
Interested in underwriting? Let us know

 

FacebookTwitterYouTube

©2022 The University of Texas McDonald Observatory


Source URL:https://legacy.stardate.org/astro-guide/gallery/loud-black-hole

Links
[1] https://legacy.stardate.org/astro-guide/gallery/loud-black-hole [2] https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/new-nasa-black-hole-sonifications-with-a-remix.html [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dazzling_Galaxy.jpg