Astronomers have captured the first direct image of a black hole as it blasts off a powerful jet.
New photos show monstrous supermassive A black hole At the heart of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87), the first ever black hole Direct Image by Humanity.
The image shows precisely for the first time how the base of such an astrophysical jet traveling at speeds approaching that of light connects with the surrounding matter. A supermassive black hole Before it is fed to the surface, a process astronomers call accretion. previous Images of M87’s central black hole It ejected jets and managed to capture a supermassive black hole, but not the two features simultaneously.
“This new image completes the picture by showing the region around the black hole and the jet at the same time,” said study team member Jae-Young Kim, from Kyungpook National University in South Korea and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy. said in a statement (opens in new tab).
Related: Black Holes in the Universe (Images)
The historic first image of the M87 central supermassive black hole, which has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun and is located 55 million light-years from Earth. Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration in 2017 and unveiled two years later. This new image of M87 and its outflow was created using 2018 data from radio telescopes including the Global Millimeter VLBI Array (GMVA), the Greenland Telescope, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA), which worked together. A virtual instrument about the size of the Earth (as the EHT network does).
Most or all large galaxies It is believed to have a supermassive black hole at its heart. And some of these behemoths, like the one at the center of M87, consume large amounts of matter in the form of gas and dust—and even unlucky stars that come too close.
As a result, these feeding monsters are exploding powerful jets of matter that travel at near-light speeds and can stretch thousands of light-years—sometimes, beyond the boundaries of the galaxies they traverse. How these supermassive black holes do this is not fully understood, however.
“We know that jets are ejected from the region around black holes, but we still don’t fully understand how this actually happens,” study team member Ru-Sen Lu of the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory said in the same statement. “To study this directly, we need to observe the origin of the jet as close as possible to the black hole.”
In addition to showing jets emanating from this supermassive black hole, the new image also reveals what scientists call the black hole’s shadow.
Related: Galaxy M87’s supermassive black hole shoots jets at almost lightning speed
As matter whips around the supermassive black hole at the speed of light due to the tremendous gravitational pull of this cosmic monster, the material heats up and glows.
This forms the bright golden ring seen in EHT images of the M87 bulk hole and the supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy. Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). At the center of this glowing golden ring is total darkness, the shadow of a black hole.
The new image of the M87 supermassive black hole also differs from the EHT telescope image in that it shows the region in longer wavelengths of light, which affects what astronomers can see in the region.
“At this wavelength, we can see how the jet emerges from the emission ring around the central supermassive black hole,” team member Thomas Krichbaum of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy said in the same statement.
The ring size of the black hole in this new image is also 50% larger than in the EHT image. This difference indicates that M87’s supermassive black hole is tumbling matter faster than previously thought.
In addition, the sensitivity of ALMA, which consists of 66 antennas in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, GLT and GMVA, which consists of 14 radio telescopes in Europe and North America, allows astronomers to use a process called interferometry to synchronize the signals. Personal telescopes and black hole shadows are properly revealed and at the same time look deeply into the jet’s emission.
Using this network of telescopes, astronomers will now work to better understand how feeding supermassive black holes launch powerful jets of matter. Simultaneous observations should allow the team behind this image to tease apart the complex processes occurring near supermassive black holes.
Eduardo Ross of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy also said, “We plan to observe the region around the black hole at the center of M87 at different radio wavelengths to further study the emission of the jet.” Exciting, because we will be able to learn more about what happens near one of the most mysterious regions universe“
The team’s research was published online today (April 26) in the journal Nature (opens in new tab). (opens in new tab)
Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or on Facebook (opens in new tab).
#Astronomers #capture #direct #image #black #hole #blasting #powerful #jet #photos #video
