The supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy, M87 comes into sharper and sharper focus.
Two years ago, astronomers were involved in the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project reveals images of that black hole, which lies 55 million light-years from Earth and is as massive as 6.5 billion suns. These photos were historic – the first direct view of a black hole that humanity has ever captured.
In the spring of 2017, when the EHT team collected the data that would lead to the epic images, nearly 20 other powerful telescopes on the ground and in space also studied the M87 black hole.
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A new study describes this large and powerful data set, which contains observations on a wide range of wavelengths collected by NASA. Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and Fermi gamma ray space telescope, as well as a number of other scopes.
“We knew that the first direct image of a black hole would be groundbreaking work,” studied co-author Kazuhiro Hada of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. said in a statement. “But to make the most of this remarkable image, we need to know everything we can about the black hole’s behavior at that time, by observing the entire electromagnetic spectrum.”
This behavior includes the launching of rays, or radiating rays, and fast-moving particles swinging outward from M87’s black hole. Astronomers think such jets are the source of the highest energy cosmic rays, particles that zoom through the universe at the speed of light.
The members of the study said the new dataset collects the results of the most intensive campaign observed simultaneously on a black hole with jets. Thus, plumbing can provide important insights into ray dynamics and the origin of cosmic rays, among other things.
“The understanding of the particle acceleration is very important for our understanding of both the EHT image and the rays, in all their ‘colors’,” co-author Sera Markoff, an astrophysicist at the University of Amsterdam, said in the same statement .
“These radiators succeed in transporting energy released through the black hole to scales larger than the host system, such as a large power cable,” Markoff said. “Our results will help us calculate the amount of force carried and the effect the black hole’s rays have on its environment.”
The EHT, which connects radio telescopes around the world to form a virtual instrument the size of the earth itself, is expected to begin observing the M87 black hole again this week after a two-year hiatus. The project collects data each year only during a short window in the Northern Hemisphere, when the weather is good at various observation sites. Technical issues launched the 2019 campaign and were suspended last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
As in previous years, the new EHT campaign will also include observations of the supermassive black hole at the heart of our own Milky Way galaxy, an object of 4.3 million solar masses known as Sagittarius A *. The new data could be even more revealing, as the EHT recently added three large scopes to its network – the Greenland Telescope, the Kitt Peak 12-meter telescope in Arizona and the Northern Extended Millimeter Array in France.
“With the release of this data, combined with the resumption of observation and an improved EHT, we know that there are many exciting new results at hand,” Mislav Baloković, co-author of Yale University, said in the same statement.
The new study, which brings together the work of 760 scientists and engineers from nearly 200 institutions around the world, was published online on Wednesday (April 14) in The astrophysical journal letters.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.