If you thought the first image of a black hole in the distant galaxy M87 was something special two years ago, a newly released video that brings together the work of 19 observatories will blow you away. In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) captured the 25 billion-mile-wide black hole for the first time, but do not let the name fool you into imagining your one telescope with an astronomer’s eye on the viewfinder.
M87 – or Messier 87 – is close at least in astronomical terms. About 55 million light-years from Earth, it is one of the most massive galaxies in the local universe, and was first identified in 1781 by Charles Messier.
The black hole in its middle, however, held its riddles much longer. An example of a supermassive black hole, it forced astronomers to think laterally when they wanted to capture a picture of it: after all, black holes capture light by definition. The EHT collected data from eight different telescopes and put the information together to create an image of the glowing gas around the ink-black ie in its center, with gravity bending causing a shadow.
The picture made headlines in 2019, but now the EHT is again delivering more tools and more details. “We knew the first direct image of a black hole would be groundbreaking,” explained Kazuhiro Hada of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, a co-author of a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. . “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.”
This time, 19 observatories, including five operated by NASA, were used to give an unprecedented tour of M87 in different wavelengths of light. It depends on the fact that gravity through the black hole can cause rays of particles that move almost at the speed of light, across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. These radiators spread across the universe and scatter radio waves through visible light to gamma rays, with different sets collected by the 19 different instruments.
The video starts with the original EHT image, and then turns out through radio telescope arrays, over visible and then ultraviolet light, and then to X-rays. Finally, there is data from gamma-ray scopes on the ground, along with NASA’s Fermi in space.
It took 760 scientists and engineers, across 200 institutions, and over the course of March and April 2017 to compile the large dataset. It is also not just for entertainment, with the potential for unlocking new scientific breakthroughs.
“For example,” NASA explains, “scientists plan to use this data to improve tests of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Currently, the main obstacles to these tests are uncertainty about the material that revolves around the black hole and is blown away in rays, especially the properties that determine the released light. ”
Meanwhile, it can also help us understand ‘cosmic rays’, how they are formed, and the potential impact they have on the rest of the universe. “These jets manage to transport energy released through the black hole to scales larger than the host system, such as a large power cable,” explains Sera Markoff of the University of Amsterdam and co-author of the study. “Our results will help us to calculate the amount of force carried and the effect that the rays of the black hole have on its environment.”