The observations began when Swift, which monitors the sky for cosmic outbursts of X-rays and gamma rays, caught a large flare coming from the supermassive black hole called Markarian 335, or Mrk 335, located 324 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Pegasus. The new data support the "lamppost" model - and demonstrate, in the finest detail yet, how the light-bulb-like coronas move. In fact, it's possible that coronas switch between both the lamppost and sandwich configurations. The other model proposes that the coronas are spread out more diffusely, either as a larger cloud around the black hole, or as a "sandwich" that envelops the surrounding disk of material like slices of bread. The "lamppost" model says they are compact sources of light, similar to light bulbs, that sit above and below the black hole, along its rotation axis. Coronas are made up of highly energetic particles that generate X-ray light, but details about their appearance, and how they form, are unclear.Īstronomers think coronas have one of two likely configurations. Another source of radiation near a black hole is the corona. The gravity of a black hole pulls swirling gas into it, heating this material and causing it to shine with different types of light. Supermassive black holes don't give off any light themselves, but they are often encircled by disks of hot, glowing material. "This will help us understand how supermassive black holes power some of the brightest objects in the universe." "This is the first time we have been able to link the launching of the corona to a flare," said Dan Wilkins of Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Canada, lead author of a new paper on the results appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The results suggest that supermassive black holes send out beams of X-rays when their surrounding coronas - sources of extremely energetic particles - shoot, or launch, away from the black holes. The two space telescopes caught a supermassive black hole in the midst of a giant eruption of X-ray light, helping astronomers address an ongoing puzzle: How do supermassive black holes flare? The baffling and strange behaviors of black holes have become somewhat less mysterious recently, with new observations from NASA's Explorer missions Swift and the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR.
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