Wiktionary
alt. (context astronomy English) A structure formed by matter falling into a gravitational source such as a galaxy, black hole, or protostar. n. (context astronomy English) A structure formed by matter falling into a gravitational source such as a galaxy, black hole, or protostar.
Wikipedia
An accretion disk is a structure (often a circumstellar disk) formed by diffused material in orbital motion around a massive central body. The central body is typically a star. Gravity causes material in the disk to spiral inward towards the central body. Gravitational and frictional forces compress and raise the temperature of the material causing the emission of electromagnetic radiation. The frequency range of that radiation depends on the central object's mass. Accretion disks of young stars and protostars radiate in the infrared; those around neutron stars and black holes in the X-ray part of the spectrum. The study of oscillation modes in accretion disks is referred to as diskoseismology.
Usage examples of "accretion disk".
Whether these planets are the remnants of an earlier planetary system that somehow survived the supernova explosion that produced the pulsar, or whether they formed from the resulting circumstellar accretion disk subsequent to the supernova explosion, we do not know.
The plasma glowed green and violet traceries sucked it along the field lines, bound for the accretion disk.
You can't anchor a magnetic field in a black hole, but some of the field lines would penetrate the accretion disk and attach themselves very close to the event horizon.
The accretion disk churned below, a great lurid pinwheel grinding to an audience of densely packed stars.
Studying his instruments, Hah saw that one of the pursuing Imperial ships, the smaller of the two, hadnt been able to dupli-cate his maneuver-the ship vanished into the embrace of the black holes accretion disk with a tiny, ignoble flare.
Studying his instruments, Hah saw that one of the pursuing Imperial ships, the smaller of the two, hadnt been able to dupli-cate his maneuverthe ship vanished into the embrace of the black holes accretion disk with a tiny, ignoble flare.
It would form into an accretion disk, and then spiral inward from the disk.
At her urging he described it as best he could: the colors, the progressive flattening of core suns into an accretion disk, the swelling of the Ring of Fire, the final drastically flattened plane of neutronium flecked with smaller black holes.
Space horses were theorized to have evolved in the energy-rich accretion disk of a black hole—.
The forces drew much of the plasma into an accretion disk, a maelstrom gyring about the black hole, to plunge at last down the throat of the vortex.
It devoured almost half of the screen space--a huge pit of eternal, starless night, haloed by a gorgeous display of purple, red, blue, and yellow dust and matter that formed the swirling accretion disk.
As it closes in on the sump at the bottom of the gravity well the accretion disk heats up, until atoms split in the incandescent glare of an on-going explosion.
Tidal forces there would lengthen any material object to a thread, and from the accretion disk formed around the black sphere that thread would go into a nose dive from which there was no return.
The star itself went on unscathed, but one unlucky planet struck a moon-sized mass that deflected it into a great accretion disk.