Schematic drawing of the GRS 1915+105 binary system

The image shows an artist's impression of the binary stellar system GRS 1915+105 in which a heavy black hole is present. The distance between the donor star and the accreting black hole is about half the distance between the Earth and the Sun. The drawing illustrates how the donor star feeds the black hole via an accretion disk, and also the emergence of jets perpendicular to the disk. In the lower panel the blue colour denotes matter that spirals in the accretion disk, while in the orange region matter is freely falling radially into the black hole.

Technical information: Robert Hynes (University of Southampton, UK) provided software to produce the upper part of this image.