Measuring the Spins of Stellar Black Holes: A Progress Report

Understand

We use the Novikov-Thorne thin disk model to fit the thermal continuum X-ray spectra of black hole X-ray binaries, and thereby extract the dimensionless spin parameter a* = a/M of the black hole as a parameter of the fit.

• We summarize the results obtained to date for six systems and describe work in progress on additional systems.
• We also describe recent methodological advances, our current efforts to make our analysis software fully available to others, and our theoretical efforts to validate the Novikov-Thorne model.