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Chandra discovers history of black hole X-ray jets NASA NEWS RELEASE Posted: October 1, 2002 For the first time, astronomers have tracked the life cycle of X-ray jets from a black hole. A series of images from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory revealed the jets traveled at near light speed for several years before slowing down and fading.
Astronomers have been using Chandra and radio telescopes to observe two opposing jets of high-energy particles emitted following an outburst, first detected in 1998 by NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, from the double-star system XTE J1550- 564. The X-ray jets, which require a continuous source of trillion-volt electrons to remain bright, were observed moving at about half the speed of light (approximately 93,000 miles per second). Four years later, they are more than three light-years apart, slowing down and fading. "The ejection of jets from stellar and supermassive black holes is a common occurrence in the universe, so it is extremely important to understand the process," said John Tomsick of the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of an Astrophysical Journal paper scheduled for January 2003 publication describing the research. "For the first time, we have observed a jet from the initial explosion until it slowed and faded," he said.
"This poses a puzzle. The simple model for jets doesn't explain what we are seeing," said Phil Kaaret of the Harvard- Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., and lead author of another upcoming Astrophysical Journal paper on XTE J1550-564. "Either the black hole may somehow be feeding more energy into the western jet, or that jet has run into a dense cloud," he said. As jets plow through the interstellar gas, the resistance of the gas slows them down like air resistance slows down moving objects on Earth. Although all jets are believed to decelerate in this way, the observations of XTE J1550-564 mark the first time jets have been caught in the act of slowing down. The observed deceleration underscores the value of small, stellar black holes in our galaxy for studying similar processes that occur in distant quasars and active galactic nuclei. XTE J1550-564, which is about 17,000 light-years from Earth, was observed with Chandra's Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer and the High Energy Transmission Grating instruments. Radio data used in this study were obtained by the Australia Telescope Compact Array. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.,
manages the Chandra program for the Office of Space Science,
Washington, and TRW, Inc., Redondo Beach, Calif., is the
prime contractor. The Smithsonian's Chandra X-ray Center
controls science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.
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