NASA reveals 'best ever' view of a black hole

NASA captured the best ever view of the black hole when compact source of X-rays moved towards it.

15:35 18 August 2014

Scientists have revealed that they have caught a better-than-ever view of the black hole showing how it can drag space and time around as it spins. This finding could lead to a new understanding of Einstein’s theory of relativity.

NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) captured the “best ever” view when a compact source of X-rays was pulled into it. The blurred and stretched X-rays is a phenomenon that is rarely captured and has never been studied in such detail before.

"NuSTAR's unprecedented capability for observing this and similar events allows us to study the most extreme light-bending effects of general relativity," said Fiona Harrison, who is NuSTAR principal investigator and based at the California Institute of Technology.

Some of the light that falls into supermassive black holes is never seen again, but other high-energy light comes from the corona and a disk of superheated material that surrounds it.

Scientists are yet to identify the shapes and temperatures of coronas although artists have already produced sketches of how the formations could look (as shown in this article).