NuSTAR and coronas

Designing the new website has been fun for me, though I wish we had more photos. I already have done 6 annotated bibliographies by now and this is my third blog post. Various supplies have been gathered in preparation for the practical component of the project. My plans for creating the interactive model will take place around late November to December. Hopefully all goes well.

The two research articles I found recently talk about NASA’s NuSTARs captures of the corona – a compact source of x-rays near supermassive black holes. In 2014, a rare event where the corona moved closer to the black hole resulted in extreme blurring and stretching of X-ray light. This October, the Swift and NuSTAR caught a black hole in the midst of a giant eruption of x-ray light. Results suggest, that the black holes send out beams of x-rays when their surrounding coronas launch away from the black holes. It is the first time the launching of a corona has been linked to a flare.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A diagram to show the corona can create X-ray flares around a black hole.

#Catherine