Continuous infrared winds discovered during the eruption of a stellar mass black hole

A team of researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has, for the first time, detected constant infrared emission from winds produced during the eruption of a black hole in an X-ray binary.

Until now, these flows of material had been detected only in other wavelength ranges, such as X-rays or within the visible spectrum, depending on the phase in which the black hole consumes its surrounding material.

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Credit: Gabriel Pérez Díaz, SMM (IAC).

Artistic impression of the constant emission of winds produced during the eruption of a black hole in an X-ray binary.

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NASA's Swift caught the onset of a rare X-ray outburst from a stellar-mass black hole in the binary system V404 Cygni.

In this system, a stream of gas from a star much like the sun flows toward a 10 solar mass black hole. Instead of spiraling toward the black hole, the gas accumulates for decades in an accretion disk around it. Every couple of decades, the disk switches into a state that sends the gas rushing inward, starting a new outburst.