FIRST IMAGE OF BLACK HOLE SHADOW AND JET TOGETHER

Last edited Wed Apr 26, 2023, 05:14 PM - Edit history (1)

BY: CAMILLE M. CARLISLE APRIL 26, 2023 0

For the first time, astronomers have seen how the big plasma jet shot out by a supermassive black hole connects to the material falling into the black hole.


Last week, I wrote about a new look at the ring of light around M87*, the beefy supermassive black hole that squats at the center of the elliptical galaxy M87, in the Virgo Cluster. Today in Nature, astronomers have unveiled another image of the glow around this black hole — this time made with new observations.

Ru-Sen Lu (Shanghai Astronomical Observatory) and an international team used a global network of radio dishes to peer deep into M87’s heart, following the galaxy’s 5,000-light-year-long plasma jet back to its source. The network is different than the one used by the Event Horizon Telescope project, albeit with some overlap (both in sites and in people).

The EHT observes at 1.3 mm, which enables astronomers to bypass the plasma haze hiding the black hole and detect the glow of material just outside it. The leviathan’s own gravity bends this glow into a ring around where it sits, invisible. But the array did not have enough telescopes to resolve both the ring and the jet at this wavelength.

The new work sacrifices the innermost region to include the jet. The team used the Global Millimetre VLBI Array, ALMA, and the Greenland Telescope to study M87 at a wavelength nearly three times longer, 3.5 mm. The data reveal a thick ring around a central, darker region — which may strike you as familiar. Meanwhile, the jet is a fairly hollow, parabolic cylinder, its edges connecting to bright regions in the ring, which is likely where material is feeding into the jet from the disk of accreting stuff.

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