The supermassive black hole At the heart of the galaxy, M87 is becoming increasingly clear.
Two years ago, astronomers with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project revealed images of that black hole, which is 55 million light-years from Earth and is as large as 6.5 billion suns. These photographs were historical – the first direct views of a black hole that mankind had ever captured.
In the spring of 2017, while the EHT team was collecting some of the data that would result in epic images, another 20 powerful ground and space telescopes were also studying the M87 black hole.
Related: The first historical images of a black hole show that Einstein was right (again)
A new study describes this huge and powerful data set, which contains observations on a wide range of wavelengths collected by NASA Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory, Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, the nuclear spectroscopic telescope matrix (NuSTAR) and Fermi gamma-ray space telescope, as well as a number of other areas.
“I knew that the first direct image of a black hole would be revolutionary,” said study co-author Kazuhiro Hada of Japan’s National Astronomical Observatory. he said in a statement. “But to make the most of this remarkable image, we need to know everything we can about the behavior of the black hole at that moment, observing the entire electromagnetic spectrum.”
This behavior includes the release of jets, or beams of radiation and fast-moving particles that sway outward from the black hole of the M87. Astronomers believe that such jets are the source of the greatest energy cosmic rays, particles that zoom through the universe at almost the speed of light.
The new data set gathers the results of the most intense simultaneous observation campaign ever undertaken on a black jet hole, study team members said. So, its installation could provide essential information about the dynamics of jets and the origin of cosmic rays, among others.
“Understanding particle acceleration is really essential for our understanding of both EHT imaging and jets, in all their ‘colors,'” said co-author Sera Markoff, an astrophysicist at the University of Amsterdam, in the same statement.
“These jets manage to transport the energy released by the black hole to larger scales than the host galaxy, like a huge power cord,” Markoff said. “Our results will help us calculate the amount of power transported and the effect of black hole jets on its environment.”
EHT, which connects radio telescopes around the world to form a virtual instrument the size of Earth itself, is scheduled to begin observing the M87 black hole again this week, after a two-year hiatus. The project collects data only during a short window in the spring of the northern hemisphere each year, when the weather tends to be good at its various observation sites. The technical problems eliminated the 2019 campaign, and last year it was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
As in previous years, the new EHT campaign will also include observations of the supermassive black hole in the heart of our own Milky Way galaxy, a 4.3 million-object solar object known as Sagittarius A *. The new data could be even more revealing, as EHT has recently added three major areas of activity to its network – the Greenland Telescope, the 12-meter Kitt Peak Telescope in Arizona and the North Extended North American Metric Matrix.
“With the release of this data, combined with the resumption of observation and an improvement in EHT, we know that many interesting new results are on the horizon,” study co-author Mislav Baloković of Yale University said in the same statement.
The new study, which brings together the work of 760 scientists and engineers from nearly 200 institutions around the world, was published online on Wednesday (April 14th) in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Mike Wall is the author of “There“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.