Black Hole Art

The Hubble telescope makes wonderful art out of science, but some data needs a lot of gussying up prior to public presentation.

Illustration of a black hole and its yellow
companion star shot into space by a supernova.
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When researchers used Hubble to track a star zooming across the galaxy, they figured out that the star orbited a black hole. This wayward gravity monster poses no threat to Earth, but it's pretty darn interesting nonetheless. The pair of objects, it seems, was long ago shot out of a supernova as if from a cannon.

We can’t see black holes, of course, so the artists had to step in and interpret for us what happened.

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