May 9, 2025
The night sky on your birthday is never quite the same twice — the planets shift, the constellations drift, the Moon wears a different phase.
IXPE Explores a Black Hole Jet
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APOD published May 9, 2025. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
How do black holes create X-rays? Answering this long-standing question was significantly advanced recently with data taken by NASA’s IXPE satellite. X-rays cannot exit a black hole, but they can be created in the energetic environment nearby, in particular by a jet of particles moving outward. By observing X-ray light arriving from near the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy BL Lac, called a blazar, it was discovered that these X-rays lacked significant polarization, which is expected when created more by energetic electrons than protons. In the featured artistic illustration, a powerful jet is depicted emanating from an orange-colored accretion disk circling the black hole. Understanding highly energetic processes across the universe helps humanity to understand similar processes that occur on or near our Earth. Put it All Together: Astronomy Puzzle of the Day