Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/U.Wisc-Madison/S. Heinz et al.; Optical/IR: Pan-STARRS

The black hole in V404 Cygni is actively pulling material away from a companion star — with about half the mass of the Sun — into a disk around the invisible object. A burst of X-rays from the black hole detected in 2015 created the high-energy rings from a phenomenon known as light echoes, where light bounces off of dust clouds in between the system and Earth. In a new composite image, X-rays from Chandra (light blue) have been combined with optical data from the Pan-STARRS telescope that show the stars in the field of view. Each of the concentric rings is created by the burst of X-rays reflecting off dust clouds at different distances.

Provider: Chandra X-ray Observatory

Image Source: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2021/v404cyg/

Curator: Chandra X-ray Observatory, Cambridge, MA, USA

Image Use Policy: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/image_use.html