New data released by a team of hundreds of international scientists provides a more comprehensive understanding of the supermassive black hole at the heart of the M87 galaxy and the system that drives it.
A dramatic video announcing the findings promises ‘unparalleled insight’ into the black hole and suggests that the observations may also help improve the tests of general mathematician Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.
To measure and observe the behavior of black holes, researchers collected information from 19 observatories using images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (HST), Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), Fermi Gamma Ray Telescope and the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT).
In 2019, scientists released the first image of a black hole in the galaxy M87 – 55 million light-years from Earth – using the EHT.
A co-author of a report on the new datasets published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan’s Kazuhiro Hada, told NASA that the image informed their work.
“We knew the first direct image of a black hole would be groundbreaking work,” he said in a Wednesday issue. “But to make the most of this remarkable image, we need to know everything we can about the behavior of the black hole at that time by looking at the entire electromagnetic spectrum.”
The space agency, for example, said in March that the Chandra X-ray Observatory had found evidence that a ray of particles came from a fast-growing supermassive black hole.
Astronomers have studied the rays that travel near the speed of light over large distances, and NASA said that the rays of M87 produce light over the entire electromagnetic spectrum, indicating that each black hole has a unique pattern based on the intensity of light. what it produces.
“Identifying this pattern provides important insight into the characteristics of a black hole (for example, the spin and energy output), but it is a challenge because the pattern changes over time,” NASA said in the statement.
The different telescopes used in this coordinated venture help to characterize the black holes and compensate for spectrum variables.
According to NASA, the observations – made from late March to mid-April 2017 – are the largest simultaneous observation campaign ever undertaken on a supermassive black hole with rays.
“The combination of data from these telescopes and current (and future) EHT observations, will enable scientists to conduct important lines of inquiry into some of the most important and challenging fields of study of astrophysics,” the agency said, noting that initial results showed. the intensity of electromagnetic radiation produced by material around M87’s supermassive black hole was the lowest ever seen.
This week, EHT series scientists are once again looking at the black hole in M87, as well as other black holes in the distance. Several radio telescopes have been added to the network since 2017.
According to Space.com, technical problems halted the 2019 campaign and the 2020 campaign was scrapped due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“With the release of this data, combined with the resumption of observation and an improved EHT, we know that many exciting new results are at hand,” co-author Mislav Baloković of Yale University said in the NASA release.