New data released by a team of hundreds of international scientists provides a more comprehensive insight into the supermassive black hole at the heart of galaxy M87 and the system that powers it.
A dramatic video announcing the findings promises “unparalleled insight” into the black hole and suggests the observations may also help improve the tests of prolific mathematician Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
To measure and observe black hole behavior, researchers collected information from 19 observatories, using images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (HST), Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array ( NuSTAR), Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT).
In 2019, the scientists released the first-ever image of a black hole in the galaxy M87 – 55 million light-years from Earth – using the EHT.
A co-author of a report on the new datasets published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Kazuhiro Hada’s National Astronomical Observatory in Japan, told NASA the image had informed their work.
“We knew the first direct image of a black hole would be groundbreaking,” he said in a press release on Wednesday. “But to get the most out of this remarkable image, we need to know all about the black hole’s behavior at the time by observing across the entire electromagnetic spectrum.”
For example, the space agency said in March that the Chandra X-ray Observatory had found evidence of a jet of particles emerging from a fast-growing supermassive black hole.
Astronomers have studied the jets that travel long distances at nearly the speed of light, and NASA said that M87’s jets produce light across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, suggesting that each black hole has a unique pattern based on the intensity of the light it emits. produces.
“Identifying this pattern provides crucial insight into a black hole’s properties (for example, its spin and energy output), but this is challenging because the pattern changes over time,” NASA said in the statement.
The various telescopes used in this coordinated venture help characterize the black holes and compensate for spectrum variability.
According to NASA, the observations – taken from late March to mid-April 2017 – mark the largest simultaneous observation campaign ever undertaken on a supermassive black hole with jets.
“The combination of data from these telescopes and current (and future) EHT observations will enable scientists to conduct important lines of research into some of the most important and challenging areas of astrophysics study,” the agency said, noting that the first results showed that the intensity of the electromagnetic radiation produced by material around the supermassive black hole of M87 was the lowest ever observed.
This week, EHT array scientists are again looking at the black hole in M87, as well as several other distant black holes. Since 2017, several radio telescopes have been added to the network.
Technical issues hampered the 2019 campaign, and the 2020 campaign was dropped due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Space.com said.
“With the release of this data, combined with the resumption of observing and improved EHT, we know that there are many exciting new results on the horizon,” Yale University co-author Mislav Baloković said in the NASA release.