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Hubble Directly Images Disc Around a Black Hole

Posted by Soulskill on from the pretty-pictures dept.

An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from the HST site: "A team of scientists has used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to observe a quasar accretion disc — a brightly glowing disc of matter that is slowly being sucked into its galaxy's central black hole. Their study makes use of a novel technique that uses gravitational lensing to give an immense boost to the power of the telescope. The incredible precision of the method has allowed astronomers to directly measure the disc's size and plot the temperature across different parts of the disc."

3 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hubble Space Telescope by peragrin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I would say the mars rovers were a better bang for the buck, but hubble is a close second even with all the retrofits.

    I still find it a shame that the last shuttle mission wasn't a trip to the hubble to bring it home. just like the shuttle were designed to do.

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    i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
  2. Funny Interference Pattern by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Looking at that image, the two main features look like symmetric interference patterns, fairly simple ones. Why not do the Fourier (or other) analysis to recompose the original light signals?

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    make install -not war

  3. Re:Hubble Space Telescope by Yvanhoe · · Score: 1, Interesting

    The scientific input of the rovers were close to zero. Yet during the same time a German team made a cartography of Mars underground resources, including large quantities of frozen water, yet no one talked about.

    Rovers were a mere PR stunt.

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    The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.