A blazing gamma-ray source
Monday, June 6, 2016 - 08:01
in Astronomy & Space
Blazars are galaxies whose central, supermassive black holes are accreting material from surrounding regions. Although black hole accretion happens in many galaxies and situations, in the case of a blazar the infalling material erupts into a powerful, narrow beam of high velocity charged particles that, fortuitously, is pointed in our direction. The charged particles produce gamma ray photons, each photon packing over a hundred million times the energy of the highest energy X-ray photon seen by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The electron beam produces many other effects, and in blazars these include rapid, strong, and incessant variability. They sometimes also include the ability to generate high-energy gamma rays.