Oct 4 2002
From The Space Library
Astronomers used images from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer to observe, for the first time, the life cycles of x-ray jets ejected from a black hole. Scientists considered x-ray jets an extremely important phenomenon to understand, because they could reveal information about the dynamics of matter that accumulates in intense gravitational fields. From 1998 to 2002, the two satellites had collected the images showing the progressive changes of two jets of high-energy particles emitted from a black hole, microquasar XTE J1550-564. The images revealed that the jets had initially traveled at nearly half the speed of light, later decelerating and eventually disappearing. Astronomers were surprised to discover that the x-ray jet farthest from Earth was three times brighter than the jet that traveled closer to Earth, a finding that was not explained by existing models of x-ray jets. (NASA, “Chandra Discovers the History of Black Hole X-ray Jets,” news release 02-189, 3 October 2002; S. Corbel et al., “Large-Scale, Decelerating, Relativistic X-ray Jets from the Microquasar XTE J1550-564,” Science n.s. 298, no. 5591 (4 October 2002): 196-199.)
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