NASA visualization shows black holes dancing with the stars

new video From NASA shows what it looks like when the star is Stuck in the strong gravitational pull of a black hole. In these binary systems, doomed stars orbit black holes, from which gas is steadily sucked in. The visualization illustrates the diversity of these parasitic partnerships in our galaxy’s backyard, including some particularly extreme examples – such as MAXI J1659, where the star completes a full orbit every 2.4 hours.

NASA displays 22 of these systems, located either in our Milky Way galaxy or in the Large Magellanic Cloud, nearby The galaxy around 160,000 light years from Earth.

The relationship between a black hole and a star in one of these systems is parasitic, like The black hole consumes mass from its companion. In the visualization (which features a soundtrack of a super triple synthesizer wave), this is shown by the visible teardrop shape of some of the stars. NASA says black holes collect stellar matter in one of two main ways: There can be a continuous stream of stellar gas flowing directly into the black hole, or the black hole can passively consume the star’s stellar wind. This issue then pose The accretion disk of a black hole, which glows in visible, ultraviolet, and X-rays.