XMM-Newton sees light echo from behind a black hole

Image: For the first time, astronomers have seen light coming from behind a black hole. Using ESA's XMM-Newton and NASA's NuSTAR space telescopes, an international team of scientists led by Dan Wilkins of Stanford University in the USA observed extremely bright flares of X-ray light coming from around a black hole. The X-ray flares echoed off of the gas falling into the black hole, and as the flares were subsiding, the telescopes picked up fainter flashes, which were the echoes of the flares bou...