{"id":3218,"date":"2019-02-04T09:00:50","date_gmt":"2019-02-04T13:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/?p=3218"},"modified":"2019-02-04T11:14:30","modified_gmt":"2019-02-04T15:14:30","slug":"nicer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/?p=3218","title":{"rendered":"NICER"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"float: left; padding-right: 30px;\">\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 5px;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 5px;\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"580\" height=\"326\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/T8kJwGDwONo\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 5px;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>NASA dicit:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Scientists have mapped the environment surrounding a black hole that is 10 times the mass of the Sun using NASA&#8217;s Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) payload aboard the International Space Station. NICER detected X-ray light from a recently discovered black hole, called MAXI J1820+070 (J1820 for short), as it consumed material from a companion star. Waves of X-rays formed &#8220;light echoes&#8221; that reflected off the swirling gas near the black hole and revealed changes in the environment&#8217;s size and shape. <\/p>\n<p>A black hole can siphon gas from a nearby star and into a ring of material called an accretion disk that glows in X-rays. Above this disk is the corona, a region of subatomic particles that glows in higher-energy X-rays. <\/p>\n<p>Astrophysicists want to better understand how the inner edge of the accretion disk and the corona change in size and shape as a black hole accretes material from its companion star. If they can understand how and why these changes occur in stellar-mass black holes over a period of weeks, they could shed light on how supermassive black holes evolve over millions of years and how they affect the galaxies in which they reside. <\/p>\n<p>One method used to chart those changes is called X-ray reverberation mapping, which uses X-ray reflections in much the same way sonar uses sound waves to map undersea terrain. From 10,000 light-years away, the scientists estimated that the corona contracted vertically from roughly 100 to 10 miles &#8212; that&#8217;s like seeing something the size of a blueberry shrink to something the size of a poppy seed at the distance of Pluto.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Video Credit: NASA Goddard<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 5px;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 5px;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists have mapped the environment surrounding a black hole that is 10 times the mass of the Sun using NASA&#8217;s Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) payload aboard the International Space Station.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[391,463],"tags":[662],"class_list":["post-3218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy","category-videos","tag-nicer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3219,"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3218\/revisions\/3219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}