Hubble directly observes a black hole accretion disk

Not sure if this was posted already, but...

I think it's pretty amazing that you can see the accretion disk of a black hole. It's def. one of the coolest photos I have ever seen.

source:
www.tgdaily.com...

Quasars blow my mind. Imagine how bright and powerful something has to be for it to be visible from billions of light years away.

By recording the variation in colour, the team were able to reconstruct the colour profile across the accretion disc. Because the temperature of an accretion disc increases the closer it is to the black hole, the team could measure the diameter of the disc of hot matter, and plot how hot it is at different distances from the centre.

They found that the disc is between four and eleven light-days across - a remarkably accurate measurement for a small object at such a great distance.

Originally posted by TupacShakur

Quasars blow my mind. Imagine how bright and powerful something has to be for it to be visible from billions of light years away.

By recording the variation in colour, the team were able to reconstruct the colour profile across the accretion disc. Because the temperature of an accretion disc increases the closer it is to the black hole, the team could measure the diameter of the disc of hot matter, and plot how hot it is at different distances from the centre.

They found that the disc is between four and eleven light-days across - a remarkably accurate measurement for a small object at such a great distance.

They're truly remarkable! I think Quasars are one of those things that we cannot even begin to imagine. When we think of something bright, we think of super bright lights, staring directly at the sun etc. Can you even imagine something that's a trillion times brighter than the sun...or for that matter can you even imagine something 3 times brighter than the sun?

The human mind cannot even begin to comprehend the power of the universe, that's why this photo is so powerful! To me anyway

Originally posted by goldcoin

Originally posted by TupacShakur

They found that the disc is between four and eleven light-days across - a remarkably accurate measurement for a small object at such a great distance.

They're truly remarkable! I think Quasars are one of those things that we cannot even begin to imagine... The human mind cannot even begin to comprehend the power of the universe, that's why this photo is so powerful! To me anyway

Yes the power in quasars is mind-bending!

By the way, our solar system is a little over half a light day across, and even our entire solar system doesn't seem like such a small object to me since the Voyager craft have been traveling for 34 years at 38,000 m.p.h. just to reach one edge of it. So I guess calling something 7.5 light days across a "small object" is relative. Compared to the universe it's small, but compared to our solar system it's 12 times as large.