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.
The release, images and videos are available on:
http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1116/
Kind regards,
ESA/Hubble Information Centre
The ESO Education and Public Outreach Department
4 November 2011
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2 November 2011: The Hubblecast has been highly commended in the 2011 MEDEA awards. An international panel of educational and media experts judged that the Hubblecast was among the best entries in this ...
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25 October 2011: In episode 49 of the Hubblecast, Dr Joe Liske (aka Dr J) asked viewers to send in their questions about astronomy and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. In episode 50, ...
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