NASA Missions Monitor a Waking Black Hole

On June 15, NASA's Swift caught the onset of a rare X-ray outburst from a stellar-mass black hole in the binary system V404 Cygni. Astronomers around the world are watching the event. 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 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. Read more: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-missions-monitor-a-waking-black-hole" rel="nofollow">www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-missions-monitor-a-waki...</a> Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Download this video in HD formats from NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio <a href="http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=11110" rel="nofollow">svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=11110</a>