The image is a long-anticipated look at the massive object that sits at the very center of our galaxy. The image was produced by a global research team called the Event Horizon Telescope, or EHT, Collaboration, using observations from a worldwide network of radio telescopes.ĭownload a high resolution version of the Sgr A* image. This result provides overwhelming evidence that the object is indeed a black hole and yields valuable clues about the workings of such giants, which are thought to reside at the center of most galaxies. today, astronomers unveiled the first image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy. National Science Foundation with the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration in Washington, D.C. – During a press conference hosted by the U.S. In the long term, data from the EHT should help us understand this cosmic marvel in better detail.Washington, D.C. This causes the magnetic field lines to twist and tangle, producing another particle accelerator effect.īoth of these effects create the fastest particles in the Universe, knocking at the door of the cosmic speed limit: the speed of light. At the same time, a magnetic dual-carriageway forms at the black hole's equator. This effect coils magnetic fields, creating a cosmic corkscrew that accelerates particles close to the speed of light before firing them out into the void. Our best models suggest that black holes twist the fabric of spacetime at its poles. Prof Konstantinos N Gourgouliatos, a theoretical physicist at the University of Durham, this is like a water fountain coming out of a 1cm-wide hosepipe and travelling 80 per cent of the way around the Earth (that's 10,000 kilometres). Astronomers have observed jets of particles streaming out of black holes so long and fierce that they break out from their galaxy altogether.
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Pop culture dictates that nothing escapes a black hole.
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Once the data from all eight telescopes was collected, the next task was to piece it together to form a complete picture. The resulting telescope can resolve objects that appear a million times smaller than the edge of a razor blade held at arm’s length. To pick out the tiny target at the centre of the M87, the EHT Collaboration produced a virtual telescope the size of the Earth by combining eight telescopes from around the globe. Astronomers frequently use a process called ‘interferometry’ to increase the resolution of their images, which uses several telescopes pointed at the same subject, to combine to make one telescope, with the distance between them being the diameter of the virtual telescope. Just as an astronomical telescope can see further than a spyglass, the larger the telescope, the smaller (or further away) the object it can resolve, and the diameter of its mirror is the key.
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Although its enormous mass is 6.5 billion times that of the Sun, it is also incredibly dense, with a diameter about 30,000 times that of the Sun. At 55 million light-years from Earth, the supermassive black hole appears far too small in the sky for any one telescope to capture on its own.
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The EHT gathered the data in April 2017 over the course of a week-long observation, using eight telescopes in co-operation. Black holes: how did we discover these ‘dark stars’?.Everything you wanted to know about black holes (and where to find them).