Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Steve Roy
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
(Phone: 256/544-6535)
Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Observatory Center, Cambridge, Mass.
(Phone: 617/496-7998)
RELEASE: 02-222
Over the course of the next few hundred million years, the
two black holes in NGC 6240, which are about 3000 light-years
apart, will drift toward one another and merge to form an
even larger supermassive black hole. Toward the end of this
process an enormous burst of gravitational waves will be
produced several hundred million years from now.
Chandra observed NGC 6240 for 10.3 hours with the Advanced
CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS). Other members of the team
are Vadim Burwitz and Peter Predehl of the Max Planck
Institute, Jelle Kaastra of the Space Research Organization
Netherlands and Yasushi Ikebe of the University of Maryland
in Baltimore.
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