This chart depicts the electromagnetic spectrum, highlighting the X-ray portion. NASA NuSTAR and ESA XMM-Newton telescope complement each other by seeing different colors of X-ray light.

Black holes are tremendous objects whose immense gravity can distort and twist space-time, the fabric that shapes our universe as this chart from NASA NuSTAR and ESA XMM-Newton telescope illustrates.

This plot of data from two space telescopes, NASA NuSTAR and ESA XMM-Newton determines for the first time the shape of ultra-fast winds from supermassive black holes, or quasars.

Supermassive black holes at the cores of galaxies blast radiation and ultra-fast winds outward, as illustrated in this artist conception based on NASA NuSTAR and ESA XMM-Newton telescopes.

Scientists measure the spin rates of supermassive black holes by spreading the X-ray light into different colors. The light comes from accretion disks that swirl around black holes, as shown in both of the artist concepts.

This image taken by the ultraviolet-light monitoring camera on the European Space Agency ESA XMM-Newton telescope shows the beautiful spiral arms of the galaxy NGC1365.

The areas where high-energy X-rays were detected by NASA's NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) from the auroras near Jupiter's north and south poles are shown in purple in this graphic. The emissions are the highest-energy light ever seen at Jupiter and the highest-energy light ever detected from a planet in our solar system other than Earth. The light comes from accelerated electrons colliding with the atmosphere. NuSTAR cannot pinpoint the source of the light with high precision, but can only find that it is coming from somewhere in the purple-colored regions. X-rays are a form of light, but with much higher energies and shorter wavelengths than the visible light human eyes can see. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the ESA (European Space Agency) XMM-Newton observatory have both studied X-rays from Jupiter's auroras – produced when volcanos on Jupiter's moon Io shower the planet with ions (atoms stripped of their electrons). Jupiter's powerful magnetic field accelerates the particles and funnels them toward the planet's poles, where they collide with its atmosphere and release energy in the form of light, including X-rays. Electrons from Io are also accelerated by the planet's magnetic field, according to observations by the Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment (JADE) and Jupiter Energetic-particle Detector Instrument (JEDI) on NASA's Juno spacecraft, which arrived at Jupiter in 2016. Researchers suspected that those electrons should produce even higher-energy X-rays than those observed by Chandra and XMM-Newton, and the NuSTAR detections confirm that hypothesis. The high-energy X-rays are relatively faint, and required a week of NuSTAR observations to detect. Scientists have detected X-rays in Earth's auroras with even higher energies than what NuSTAR saw at Jupiter, but those emissions can only be spotted by small satellites or high-altitude balloons that get extremely close to the locations in the atmosphere that generate those X-rays. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25131

This artist's impression depicts the accretion disc surrounding a black hole, in which the inner region of the disc precesses. "Precession" means that the orbit of material surrounding the black hole changes orientation around the central object. In these three views, the precessing inner disc shines high-energy radiation that strikes the matter in the surrounding accretion disc. This causes the iron atoms in that disc to emit X-rays, depicted as the glow on the accretion disc to the right (in view a), to the front (in view b) and to the left (in view c) (see Figure 1). In a study published in July 2016, astronomers used data from ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray Observatory and NASA's NuSTAR telescope to measure this "wobble" in X-ray emission from excited iron atoms. Scientists interpreted this as evidence for the Lense-Thirring effect -- a name for the precession phenomenon -- in the strong gravitational field of a black hole. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA20697

These four images show an artist's impression of gas accreting onto the neutron star in the binary system MXB 1730-335, also known as the "Rapid Burster." In such a binary system, the gravitational pull of the dense neutron star is stripping gas away from its stellar companion (a low-mass star, not shown in these images). The gas forms an accretion disk and spirals towards the neutron star. Observations of the Rapid Burster using three X-ray space telescopes -- NASA's NuSTAR and Swift, and ESA's XMM-Newton -- have revealed what happens around the neutron star before and during a so-called "type-II" burst. These bursts are sudden, erratic and extremely intense releases of X-rays that liberate enormous amounts of energy during periods when very little emission occurs otherwise. Before the burst, the fast-spinning magnetic field of the neutron star keeps the gas flowing from the companion star at bay, preventing it from reaching closer to the neutron star and effectively creating an inner edge at the center of the disk (Figure 1, panel 1). During this phase, only small amounts of gas leak towards the neutron star. However, as the gas continues to flow and accumulate near this edge, it spins faster and faster. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA21418