Astronomers have revealed a new image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Messier 87 galaxy.
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration released new images of the M87 black hole from observations taken in April 2018, one year after the first observations.
The new observations, from several telescopes, reveal a familiar bright ring of emission of the same size as that seen in 2017.
They also show that the black hole is “active” and “feeding”.
The ring surrounds a dark central shadow and the brightest part of the ring in the new image now lies in the five o’clock position.
Dr Keiichi Asada, an associate research fellow at Academia Sinica Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Taiwan, said: “A fundamental requirement of science is to be able to reproduce results.
“Confirmation of the ring in a completely new data set is a huge milestone for our collaboration and a strong indication that we are looking at a black hole shadow and the material orbiting around it.”
M87 is at the heart of the giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87 and lives 55 million light years away from Earth.
UCL’s Dr Ziri Younsi, a member of the EHT collaboration, said: “It is very exciting that over the course of a year, the brightest part of the bright ring encircling the black hole shadow has shifted by about 30 degrees.
“This shift is something that was predicted in 2019 and is wonderful to now observe, showing the turbulent and dynamical nature of the supermassive black hole as matter orbits around its event horizon. This black hole is active and it is feeding.
“The brightest part of the ring appears brighter as its material is likely coming towards us, but it may also be where the material is more strongly magnetised.
“It might be that this bright area coincides with the base of the black hole’s jet, as it is about where we would expect this base to be.”
He added: “The image is sharper. Its brightest areas are a little brighter and the centre of the image which coincides with the black hole itself is darker.
“In the future, as our images continue to improve, we expect this central dark region to become almost pitch black, as it is where all light vanishes within the event horizon.”
The higher resolution of the new image is a result of the addition of the Greenland Telescope and a dramatically improved recording rate across the array of telescopes.
The findings are published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics journal.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here