Dormant Black Hole
Image may be cropped. Click to view. Dormant Black Hole
Black holes normally reveal themselves in astronomy because they are surrounded by discs of gas, heated to high temperatures, stolen from nearby stars. The X-rays emitted from these accretion discs give away the black hole although it cannot itself be seen. But in the Large Magellanic Cloud is a star system called VFTS 243. There is a visible star of type O which is 160,000 times more luminous than the Sun and 25 times as massive - and that appears to be all. But spectroscopy reveals that the star is orbiting something unseen, which can only be a dormant black hole - that is, not feeding off its companion. This illustration shows the system but with the black hole's size exaggerated.
Details

Title: Dormant Black Hole

Category: Stars & Nebulae

Date: Aug 2022

Medium: Photoshop

Keywords: Adobe Photoshop animation astrophysics black hole blue giant distortion gravity lens LMC orbit O star VFTS 243 warp

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