V404 Cygni Microquasar: Newly Released Images of Black Hole's X-ray Rings Reveal Invisible Space Dust Between Stars

A giant black hole 7,800 light-years awake devoured a nearby star, June 2015. The chaos resulted in scorching flares of light beaming out into the galaxy. In a newly released image, the echoes of light have revealed to astronomers the invisible space dust that drifts between stars allowing researchers to map and understand the cosmic event.

The celestial object observed is a member of a binary system, V404 Cygni, that can be found in the northern constellation of Cygnus. The black hole is a microquasar that is engulfed in the material upon which it feeds.

What Are Microquasars?

Microquasars, as defined by Caltech.Edu, are scaled-down versions of quasars that are believed to be powered by blackhole spins with masses that can reach a few tens that of our Sun. With both microquasars and quasars, they are found to contain three basic ingredients, namely, spinning black holes, accretion disks heated via viscous dissipation, and collimated jets of relativistic particles.

On the other hand, for microquasars, astronomers have discovered that the black hole can only reach a few solar masses instead of the several million solar masses observed elsewhere.

Hidden Space Dust Revealed Surrounding Huge Black Hole

A study published in 2016 in the journal of The Astrophysical Journey titled "A Joint Chandra and Swift View of the 2015 X-ray Dust-Scattering Echo of V404 Cygni," states that materials were being siphoned off the binary companion of the black hole, an early-stage red giant star. As the two celestial bodies circumnavigate each other in a close orbital dance, the black hole's gravitation field dips and strips the red giant's outer materials.

This process is credited as the cause of the 2015 outbursts. With the concentration of materials from the star entered the accretion disc of the black hole, it emitted a series of huge X-ray light pulses that was detectable on Earth.

Interestingly, the pulses also caused interesting phenomena in the space surrounding V404 Cygni. As beams of light traveled out into the galaxy, the dust surrounding the system produces a series of X-ray rings, ScienceAlert reports.

Although this phenomenon is not unknown, it is a rare occurrence. As of today, only three other bright X-ray light echoes have been detected originating from flaring stars in the Milky Way. Naturally, astronomers saw the opportunity to use these echoes to find out more about the outburst's behavior of the black hole and the cosmic dust surrounding it.

A newly released image from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory showcases eight concentric rings created by the flare from the black hole, traveling through space dust between the Earth and the binary. The rings are described to be "things due to the short bursts of the flare."

The ring's diameter also tells us the distance between ourselves and the rings because astronomers have measured the distance between the object V404 Cygni and Earth and how fast light can travel. The closer rings, surely, have larger diameters while the farther rings are smaller, as if you are looking down a tube.

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