![]() ![]() In addition, two other facilities were linked to the GMVA: the Greenland Telescope and ALMA, of which ESO is a partner. These new observations of M87's black hole were conducted in 2018 with the GMVA, which consists of 14 radio-telescopes in Europe and North America. The results suggest the new image reveals more of the material that is falling towards the black hole than what could be observed with the EHT. "To understand the physical origin of the bigger and thicker ring, we had to use computer simulations to test different scenarios," explains Keiichi Asada from the Academia Sinica in Taiwan. The size of the ring observed by the GMVA network is roughly 50% larger in comparison to the Event Horizon Telescope image. "At this wavelength, we can see how the jet emerges from the ring of emission around the central supermassive black hole," says Thomas Krichbaum of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy. Both this new image and the EHT one combine data taken with several radio-telescopes worldwide, but the image released today shows radio light emitted at a longer wavelength than the EHT one: 3.5 mm instead of 1.3 mm. The darkness at the centre of the ring is the black hole shadow, which was first imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) in 2017. The black hole bends and captures some of this light, creating a ring-like structure around the black hole as seen from Earth. As matter orbits the black hole, it heats up and emits light. The new image shows the jet emerging near the black hole, as well as what scientists call the shadow of the black hole. Such a large network can discern very small details in the region around M87's black hole. The image was obtained with the GMVA, ALMA and the GLT, forming a network of radio-telescopes around the globe working together as a virtual Earth-sized telescope. ![]() "This new image completes the picture by showing the region around the black hole and the jet at the same time," adds Jae-Young Kim from the Kyungpook National University in South Korea and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany. 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. The target is the galaxy M87, located 55 million light-years away in our cosmic neighbourhood, and home to a black hole 6.5 billion times more massive than the Sun. The new image published today shows precisely this for the first time: how the base of a jet connects with the matter swirling around a supermassive black hole. To study this directly we need to observe the origin of the jet as close as possible to the black hole." "We know that jets are ejected from the region surrounding black holes," says Ru-Sen Lu from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory in China, "but we still do not fully understand how this actually happens. Understanding how black holes create such enormous jets has been a long standing problem in astronomy. 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. Most galaxies harbour a supermassive black hole at their centre. ![]()
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