Observational characteristics of accretion onto black holes

Understand

These notes resulted from a series of lectures at the IAC winter school.

• They are designed to help students, especially those just starting in subject, to get hold of the fundamental tools used to study accretion powered sources.
• As such, the references give a place to start reading, rather than representing a complete survey of work done in the field.
• I outline Compton scattering and blackbody radiation as the two predominant radiation mechanisms for accreting black holes, producing the hard X-ray tail and disc spectral components, respectively.