A new video from NASA shows some of the closest black holes to Earth, along with the stars that power them.
The visualization shows 22 x-ray binaries in our two Milky Way galaxy and neighbor Large Magellanic Cloud. In each pair, the black hole is represented by a black dot in the center of an orange-red accretion disk; the star is depicted as a bluish or yellowish-white sphere scaled to match its size, according to a Statement from NASA accompanying the video.
A black hole is a point in space where the pull of gravity is so strong that not even light can escape. Black holes form when a star goes supernova, blasting large amounts of material out into space while folding or collapsing in on itself. (Don’t worry: our sun would need about 20 times its actual mass to turn into a black hole.)
Related: 8 Ways We Know Black Holes Really Exist
The black hole of an X-ray binary can collect energy from its star in two ways. The first is that a stream of gas may flow directly from the host galaxy star into the black hole, swirling “like water running down a sewer” according to American Scientist.
Other stars generate stellar winds, describe by Hubble Space Telescope staff as: “rapid streams of particles emitted from a star”. A black hole’s extreme gravitational pull allows it to suck in some of this material.
Because black holes cannot emit light, scientists cannot observe these objects directly using telescopes. However, matter falling into a black hole gradually heats up and glows, possibly as X-rays. It is on these X-rays that this visualization is based.
Although the visualization offers an idea of the variety of black holes, these objects are depicted here as being much larger relative to their companion stars and accretion disk than they actually are.
For example, take the first ever confirmed black hole, Cygnus X-1. Its surface, called event horizon, extends only about 77 miles (124 kilometers) in diameter. However, the visualization shows Cygnus X-1 to be much larger, more in line with the black hole’s mass than its volume.
The visualization’s viewing angles show how we can see the systems from Earth, while the orbital motion shown is 22,000 times faster than observed.
follow us on Twitter @Espacedotcom and on Facebook.