Black hole

On Thursday, May 12, 2022, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) team of astronomers presented the 1st direct image taken of the Milky Way galaxy's supermassive ...

So we may actually have the influence of the jet or other outflows from the central black hole – it’s not only acreting; it’s also putting stuff out there – and that might influence the whole evolution of the galaxy. The question is what role it had in the formation of our galaxy, and in the fact it looks like it does now. While the potential influence of the hypothetical jets perhaps produced by Sgr A* today is relatively mild, that wasn’t so in the Milky Way’s distant past. And it’s curious that we’re in a period right now where everything is very quiet, and probably in some way a jet of some description, some enormous eruptive event, is responsible for that. It is a myth, the experts explained, that supermassive central black holes play a role in holding their galaxies together. Dr. Sera Markoff, co-chair of the EHT Science Council and a professor of theoretical astrophysics at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands: I would love to take that one, because I’ve been trying to find jets at Sgr A* for a long time. But the sphere of influence of the black hole itself on its surrounding is not very large. Ziri Younsi, UKRI Stephen Hawking Fellow, University College London: I just wanted quickly to add to that about the jet stuff, because I think it’s really interesting. Emission jets from black holes originate along their spin axes, revealing why the orientation of Sgr A* may be important to understand galactic development. And, what is the nature of the particles ejected? So we have not found an exact model which would explain everything, so we have best-bet models and best-bet regions. During the conference, Dr. Christian Fromm, EHT’s Sgr A* Theory Working Group Coordinator, described the black hole as being face-on to Earth. EarthSky.org’s question sought elaboration on that statement.

It's only the second time scientists have managed to capture a black hole on camera.

MIT Haystack Observatory astronomer Vincent Fish said the researchers hope to obtain M87 black hole video in the future. The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy that contains at least 100 billion stars. The black hole - called Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A* - is the second one ever to be imaged. Sagittarius A*, despite being much closer to our solar system than M87, was harder to image. This is called the black hole's shadow or silhouette. Black holes are extraordinarily dense objects with gravity so strong that not even light can escape, making viewing them extremely challenging.

Now that the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration has released its picture of the Milky Way's black hole, the team is focusing on making movies of the two ...

Finally, another major goal of the EHT collaboration is to make videos of Sgr A* and M87* as the material around them moves and changes over time. “Those knots tend to line up with the directions in which we have more telescopes,” said EHT researcher Feryal Özel at the University of Arizona during the press event. The images of Sgr A* and M87* were both assembled from data gathered in 2017, but there have since been two more observation periods with extra telescopes added to the collaboration’s original eight-telescope network.

On May 12, 2022, astronomers on the Event Horizon Telescope team released an image of a black hole called Sagittarius A* that lies at the center of the ...

For the last few decades, astronomers have thought that there are massive black holes at the center of almost every galaxy. Black holes are the only objects in existence that only answer to one law of nature – gravity. The team used eight radio telescopes spread across the globe to collect data on the black hole over the course of five nights in 2017. They are far away and shrouded by the gas and dust that clogs the center of galaxies. From where Sagittarius A* sits, 26,000 light years away at the center of the Milky Way, only 1 in 10 billion photons of visible light can reach Earth – most are absorbed by gas in the way. But astronomers think there are supermassive black holes at the center of nearly all galaxies.

Event Horizon telescope captures image giving a glimpse of the turbulent heart of our galaxy.

The EHT picks up radiation emitted by particles within the accretion disc that are heated to billions of degrees as they orbit the black hole before plunging into the central vortex. Some combination of these factors – and possibly some extreme black hole phenomenon – explain the bright blobs in the image. A minority of scientists had continued to speculate about the possibility of other exotic objects, such as boson stars or clumps of dark matter. Markoff compared the observations with trying to photograph a puppy chasing its tail using a camera with a slow shutter speed. The black hole itself, known as Sagittarius A*, cannot be seen because no light or matter can escape its gravitational grip. It’s been a 100-year search for these things and so, scientifically, it’s a huge deal.”

Astronomers reveal the first ever image of the black hole at the core of our galaxy.

They'll even be looking to see if there are some star-sized black holes in the region, and for evidence of concentrated clumps of invisible, or dark, matter. What else could produce gravitational forces that accelerate nearby stars through space at speeds of up 24,000km/s (for comparison our Sun glides around the galaxy at a sedate 230km/s, or 140 miles per second)? The mass of a black hole determines the size of its accretion disc, or emission ring. So far, what they see is entirely consistent with the equations set out by Einstein in his theory of gravity, of general relativity. The 'hotspots' you see in the ring move around from day to day." This arrangement enables the EHT to cut an angle on the sky that is measured in microarcseconds.

The image, unveiled on Thursday, is from the international consortium behind the Event Horizon Telescope - eight synchronised radio telescopes around the ...

It is four million times more massive than our sun. The University of Arizona's Feryal Ozel described the black hole as "the gentle giant in the centre of our galaxy". The first image of the massive black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy has been revealed.

Phenomenon only second one to be imaged, a feat achieved using Event Horizon Telescope.

The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy that contains at least 100 billion stars. The phenomenon – called Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A* – is only the second one to be imaged. Scientists on Thursday provided the first look at a supermassive black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy, described as the “astronomical discovery of the century” by a Trinity College Dublin professor.

Taken with the help of hundreds of scientists and multiple telescopes across the world, the image is the first visual evidence confirming the presence of a ...

This is not the first time scientists have been able to capture an image of a black hole, however. In the image, a dark central region called a shadow is surrounded by a bright ring-like structure. This prediction goes all the way back to Albert Einstein’s work around relativity.

An international team of astronomers has unveiled the first image of a supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy - a cosmic body ...

An international team of astronomers has unveiled the first image of a supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy - a cosmic body known as Sagittarius A* star An international team of astronomers has unveiled the first image of a supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy - a cosmic body known as Sagittarius A*. The image thus depicts not the black hole itself, because it is completely dark, but the glowing gas that encircles the phenomenon - which is four million times more massive than our Sun - in a bright ring of bending light.

Pioneering Harvard-led global collaborative unveils latest portrait, bolstering understanding of relativity, gravity.

The project will involve designing new ultra-high-speed instrumentation and a plan to double the number of radio dishes in the EHT array that will allow scientists “to create an Earth-sized motion picture camera” that “will bring black holes to vibrant life,” said Doeleman, who also leads the ngEHT project. On Monday at 5:15 p.m. in the Harvard Science Center, Hall C, there will be a special public event with members of Harvard’s EHT team discussing the results. We’re hoping to add these new telescopes around the world and be able to really dig into those sharp features and to be able to see these high-resolution movies.” It also marks a monumental collaborative achievement for the EHT, made up of more than 300 researchers from 80 institutes around the globe and 11 observatories. The averaged image retains features more commonly seen in the varied images and suppresses features that appeared less frequently. “For Sgr A*, you have a toddler running around and you’re trying to get their portrait with the long-exposure camera. M87 is 55 million light-years away in the Virgo Galaxy cluster and has a mass about 6.5 billion times that of our sun. “This material scatters the light that we observe from Sgr A*. It’s like looking at something through frosted glass.” The researchers produced the picture with observations from the Event Horizon Telescope, a worldwide network of radio telescopes that link together to form a single Earth-sized virtual instrument. Sgr A*, on the other hand, is on the small side. The way the light bends around the dark center, known as the event horizon, shows the object’s powerful gravity, which is four million times that of our sun. An international team of astronomers led by scientists at the Center for Astrophysics