When the jets of a black hole interact with the cosmic microwave background, something brilliant can occur.
To Your Scattered Photons Go
Yesterday I wrote about the cosmic x-ray background, and I noted that x-ray astronomy, particularly with high-energy x-rays is difficult. But what is it about x-rays that makes x-ray astronomy so challenging?
Background Check
You are likely familiar with the cosmic microwave background, but there is another background that exists, known as the cosmic x-ray background. Just as the cosmic microwave background is a diffuse microwave glow, the cosmic x-ray background is a diffuse x-ray glow. You can see an image of this x-ray background in the image above. It is a false-color image, where red, green and blue represent low, medium and high x-ray energies.
Ingredient X
X-ray astronomy presents an additional challenge because you not only have to put your x-ray telescope in space, you also have to build your telescope very differently.