Featured Image Credit: NOIRLab/S. Dagnello/ESO
Topics: Space, Black Hole, Science
Jess Hardiman
Astronomers have captured a first-of-its-kind image of a powerful jet being launched from a black hole.
The groundbreaking new image will help us learn more about the behaviour of black holes, the term used for a place in space where the gravity pull is so strong that even light can’t escape.
The supermassive black hole pictured is located at the centre of a relatively near galaxy known as Messier 87, or M87, which is about 54 million light years from Earth.
Astronomers used 16 telescopes across various locations in Europe and North America to capture the incredible image - the first of a black hole as it blasts out a powerful jet.
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The team shared their findings in a new study published yesterday (26 April) in the journal Nature, titled ‘A ring-like accretion structure in M87 connecting its black hole and jet’.
Lead study author Ru-Sen Lu, astronomer at the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory in China, said: “We know that jets are ejected from the region surrounding black holes, but we still do not fully understand how this actually happens. To study this directly we need to observe the origin of the jet as close as possible to the black hole."
A first image of the M87 supermassive black hole – which has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the sun – was taken by the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration back in 2017, and shared publicly two years later.
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However, this new picture is the first of its kind to precisely show the connection between the jet’s base and the swirling matter surrounding the black hole.
Previous images had shown the black hole and jet separately, but never the two features together.
"The image underlines for the first time the connection between the accretion flow (material pulled inward) near the central supermassive black hole and the origin of the jet,” Lu added.
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The image was obtained in 2018, with the authors explaining in the study how it shows that 'the edge-brightened jet connects to the accretion flow of the black hole'.
Close to the black hole, the 'emission profile of the jet-launching region is wider than the expected profile of a black-hole-driven jet', which the researchers say suggests 'the possible presence of a wind associated with the accretion flow'.
Thomas Krichbaum, study co-author and a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, described the new image as the ‘dawn of an exciting new era’, saying: "This is what astronomers and astrophysicists have been wanting to see for more than half a century.”