Using ‘X-Ray Eyes’ to Find Hidden Black Holes | NASA’s NuSTAR Mission

Using ‘X-Ray Eyes’ to Find Hidden Black Holes | NASA’s NuSTAR Mission

Most supermassive black holes in the universe are hiding, but NASA’s NuSTAR mission can find them by using high-energy X-rays. In this video, NuSTAR lead scientist Peter Boorman explains how this space telescope penetrates thick gas and dust to reveal black holes that other telescopes cannot see. Watch to learn as well what finding and studying black holes can reveal about the way galaxies grow and evolve. 

Short for Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, NuSTAR has been operating since 2012. Recently, scientists combined 10 years of data with measurements from other missions, including the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), and they now estimate at least 35 percent of the feeding supermassive black holes in the universe are hidden. Determining the number of hidden versus unobscured black holes can help scientists understand how they get so big.

More About the Mission

NuSTAR launched on June 13, 2012. A Small Explorer mission led by Caltech in Pasadena, California, and managed by JPL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, it was developed in partnership with the Danish Technical University (DTU) and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The telescope optics were built by Columbia University, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and DTU. The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corp. in Dulles, Virginia. NuSTAR’s mission operations center is at the University of California, Berkeley, and the official data archive is at NASA’s High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center. ASI provides the mission’s ground station and a mirror data archive. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

For more information on NuSTAR, visit:
www.nustar.caltech.edu

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab; footage from “A Journey to the Center of the Milky Way: Stellar Orbits around its Central Black Hole”: data provided by Andrea Ghez and the UCLA Galactic Center Group, data obtained with the W. M. Keck Telescopes, visualization by NCSA Advanced Visualization Lab, permission granted by NCSA and additional use requires additional NCSA permission;footage from “Zoom into Our Black Hole Seen in a New Light”: ESO/L. Calçada, N. Risinger, DSS, VISTA, VVV Survey/D. Minniti DSS, Nogueras-Lara et al., Schoedel, NACO, GRAVITY Collaboration, EHT Collaboration
Duration: 2 minutes, 32 seconds
Release Date: April 9, 2025

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