XRISM’s study of supermassive black hole

JAXA’s XRISM X-ray telescope captured the distribution of matter falling into the supermassive black hole in galaxy NGC 4151 over a wide radius, spanning from 0.001 to 0.1 light-years. By determining the speed of the iron atoms from their X-rays signature, scientists have mapped out a sequence of structures surrounding the central ‘monster’: the disk closest to the black hole (in blue) where gas moves at a speed a few percent of the speed of light, followed by a transition region where gas is moving at speed of thousands of km/s and which astronomers call “the broad line region (BLR)” (in orange) , and finally the doughnut-shaped torus (in red).

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