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Supermassive Black Hole Illustration
This artist's illustration depicts a supermassive black hole, and its corona (blue) threaded by magnetic fields (white). The corona lies above a much denser disk of material (red and yellow), swirling around and falling towards the black hole. Jets (white) of material are blasting away from the black hole and corona in opposite directions. Supermassive black hole jets can inject huge amounts of energy into their surroundings and strongly influence the evolution of their environments.
(Illustration Credit: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss)
This artist's illustration depicts a supermassive black hole, and its corona (blue) threaded by magnetic fields (white). The corona lies above a much denser disk of material (red and yellow), swirling around and falling towards the black hole. Jets (white) of material are blasting away from the black hole and corona in opposite directions. Supermassive black hole jets can inject huge amounts of energy into their surroundings and strongly influence the evolution of their environments.
(Illustration Credit: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss)
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X-ray & Radio Images of Quasars in the Survey
A new study has isolated the factors that determine why some rapidly growing supermassive black holes (known as quasars) launch jets and others do not. The research, which uses data from Chandra and other telescopes, reveals the key role that regions of diffuse hot gas threaded with powerful magnetic fields — called a black hole "corona" — play in dictating whether the system creates a jet. Images of four quasars from the team's sample are shown here, with X-rays from Chandra and radio waves from the VLA.
(Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXO/Penn State Univ./S.F. Zhu et al.; Radio: NRAO/VLA/Penn State Univ./S.F. Zhu et al.)
A new study has isolated the factors that determine why some rapidly growing supermassive black holes (known as quasars) launch jets and others do not. The research, which uses data from Chandra and other telescopes, reveals the key role that regions of diffuse hot gas threaded with powerful magnetic fields — called a black hole "corona" — play in dictating whether the system creates a jet. Images of four quasars from the team's sample are shown here, with X-rays from Chandra and radio waves from the VLA.
(Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXO/Penn State Univ./S.F. Zhu et al.; Radio: NRAO/VLA/Penn State Univ./S.F. Zhu et al.)
Return to: The Recipe for Powerful Quasar Jets (October 14, 2020)
Revised: November 29, 2022