About ESA
The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Highlights
Latest
Space in Member States
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Germany
Austria
Belgium
Denmark
Spain
Estonia
Finland
France
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Luxembourg
Norway
The Netherlands
Poland
Portugal
Czechia
Romania
United Kingdom
Slovenia
Sweden
Switzerland
Science & Exploration
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicAstronauts
Latest
Enabling & Support
Making space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicLatest
MAXI J1659–152
MAXI J1659–152 is a rapidly spinning binary system comprising a black hole more than three times more massive than the Sun and a red dwarf companion star only 20% the mass of the Sun. The pair are separated by only 1.3 solar radii, or just under one million kilometres. Thanks to a 14.5 hour observing campaign by ESA’s XMM-Newton, scientists were able to measure a record-breaking orbital period of just 2.4 hours – the fastest spinning binary system with a black hole. The black hole orbits around the system’s common centre of mass at 150 000 km/h, while the companion travels at two million kilometres per hour, making it the fastest-moving star ever seen in a binary system.
The centre of mass is so close to the black hole due to its vast mass that it appears as if it is not orbiting. In this animation the focus is on the periodic absorption dips detected by XMM-Newton as the stream of material from the companion impacts on the black hole’s accretion disc.
The system was first found on 25 September 2010 by NASA’s Swift space telescope, with follow-up observations by the Japanese MAXI instrument on the International Space Station, NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, ESA’s XMM-Newton and ESO’s ground-based Very Large Telescope.
