13/11/2024
An accretion disk is a structure formed by diffuse material in orbital motion around a massive central body. Friction, uneven irradiance, magnetohydrodynamic effects, and other forces induce instabilities causing orbiting material in the disk to spiral inward toward the central body.
Credit : NASA/JPL-Caltech, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Jeremy Schnittman, NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC), ESA, ESO, NASA, and Felix Mirabel (French Atomic Energy Commission and Institute for Astronomy and Space Physics/Conicet of Argentina), SpaceEngine