Artist's impression of black hole
Date: 08 January 2019
Depicts: ASASSN-14li
Copyright: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss
This artist's impression shows hot gas orbiting in a disc around a rapidly-spinning black hole. The elongated spot depicts an X-ray-bright region in the disc, which allows the spin of the black hole to be estimated.
Studying the black hole devouring a star known as ASASSN-14li with ESA's XMM-Newton space observatory and NASA's Chandra and Swift X-ray observatories, a team of astronomers has discovered an exceptionally bright and stable signal that allowed them to determine the black hole's spin rate.
Last Update: 1 September 2019
