Echo Mapping in a Black Hole Accretion Disk and Torus (Animation)

This animation shows the events that serve as the basis of an astrophysics technique called "echo mapping," also known as reverberation mapping. At center is a supermassive black hole surrounded by a disk of material called an accretion disk. As the disk gets brighter it sometimes even releases short flares of visible light. Blue arrows show the light from this flash traveling away from the black hole, both toward an observer on Earth and toward an enormous, doughnut-shaped structure (called a torus) made of dust. The light gets absorbed, causing the dust to heat up and release infrared light. This brightening of the dust is a direct response to — or, one might, say an "echo" — of the changes happening in the disk. Red arrows show this light traveling away from the galaxy, in the same direction as the initial flash of visible light. Thus an observer would see the visible light first, and (with the right equipment) the infrared light later. Astronomers have previously proposed using echo mapping as a means of measuring distances to cosmic objects. If scientists can observe both the initial flare of visible light and the subsequent infrared brightening in the dust, they could in theo

Date

2020-10-01

Photographer / author

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Collection

JPL

Archive

NASA Image and Video Library

Type

illustration (NASA artwork)

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