In 2017, astronomers from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration captured the first image of a black hole by coordinating radio dishes around the world to act as a single, planet-sized telescope. The synchronized network focused in on M87*, the black hole at the center of Messier 87, a giant elliptical galaxy located some 53 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. The telescope’s laser-focused resolution revealed a very thin glowing ring around a dark center, representing the first visual of a black hole’s shadow. Astronomers have now refocused their view to capture a new layer of M87*. The team has harnessed another global web of observatories — the Global millimeter VLBI Array (GMVA) — to capture a more zoomed-out view of the black hole.
Most galaxies harbor a supermassive black hole at their center.
While black holes are known for engulfing matter in their immediate vicinity, they can also launch powerful jets of matter that extend beyond the galaxies that they live in.
Understanding how black holes create such enormous jets has been a long standing problem in astronomy.
“We know that jets are ejected from the region surrounding black holes, but we still do not fully understand how this actually happens,” said Dr. Ru-Sen Lu, an astronomer at the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory.
“To study this directly we need to observe the origin of the jet as close as possible to the black hole.”
The new image of M87* shows precisely this for the first time: how the base of a jet connects with the matter swirling around a supermassive black hole.
Previous observations had managed to separately image the region close to the black hole and the jet, but this is the first time both features have been observed together.
“This new image completes the picture by showing the region around the black hole and the jet at the same time,” said Dr. Jae-Young Kim, an astronomer at the Kyungpook National University and the Max Planck…
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