Black hole

The Event Horizon Telescope has now produced images of two surprisingly different supermassive black holes: the one in the center of a galaxy called M87 and ...

"Only a trickle of material is actually making it all the way to the black hole." Although the material surrounding Sagittarius A* is moving around the event horizon inconveniently fast, our supermassive black hole nonetheless offers a much tamer environment near its surface than M87* does. "Imaging Sagittarius A* was a bit of a messier story than imaging M87*," Bouman said. And the challenge of Sagittarius A* was evident as scientists analyzed the data the EHT gathered as well. That's the monster hiding within M87, also known as M87*. This black hole is farther away from Earth, of course, but it's also much larger, and material moves around its event horizon at a more leisurely pace. In particular, the two black holes differ in how difficult it is to image material moving around its boundary, or event horizon.

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 was the first-ever image of a black hole -- and it revealed the violence of the cosmic beast. This chaotic void, dubbed M87*, spews out a jet of light and ...

"We see that only a trickle of material is actually making it all the way to the black hole," Johnson said. Though it's a simulation of a binary black hole system, notice how when the blue black hole is behind the orange black hole, you can see the entirety of the blue one on the top and bottom of the orange one. Thus, he says, the black hole is inefficient. And, on the note of general relativity, the reason some parts of the light ring are brighter than others is because of a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. It's actually associated with the far end of the event horizon and part of a Saturn-like ring around the whole object. We can basically see the far end of the event horizon, and essentially all angles of the horizon there, too. Every black hole has one of these, and this is the bit that probably gives black holes their reputation of being "black." "Light that is close enough to be swallowed by it eventually crosses its horizon and leaves behind just a dark void in the center." It was the first-ever image of a black hole -- and it revealed the violence of the space-borne beast. The event horizon is basically the boundary between our universe and the elusive insides of the void. If anything from that disk falls within the Schwarzschild radius, aka beyond the event horizon, it's lost to the black hole universe. In the EHT images, this alternate reality-esque, spherical space between the singularity and event horizon is signified by the black circles.

Researchers in effect created a telescope with an Earth-sized aperture | The Economist explains.

So whereas the gases of M87* remained relatively static while being observed, around Sgr A* they were constantly moving. How did they take a picture of a black hole? Things were harder with Sgr A*. Because it is smaller, its surrounding gases take much less time to orbit than those around M87* do—a matter of minutes, rather than weeks. The hard drives were then shipped to two supercomputers at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology in America and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany. (Uploading the data via the internet would have taken a very long time.) The supercomputers then set about analysing the information, and assembling the many images from around the world into one comprehensive image. M87*, 55m light years from Earth in the Messier 87 galaxy, has a mass 6.6bn times greater than the Sun’s—but from Earth, it appears the same size as a coin on the surface of the Moon. Sgr A* is nearer—just 27,000 light years away—but much smaller. From Earth it looks like a doughnut on the Moon.

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.

Discovering something for the second time doesn't usually have scientists jump out of their seats with excitement. But that's exactly what happened in the ...

"If you looked at the source one day versus the next, or one year versus the following year, how would that change, and how much light would it emit in different wavelengths?" "If you were in space looking at the black hole, you would see absolutely nothing," Özel said. It took a globe-spanning collaboration, several years, petabytes of data and more involved algorithms than had been dedicated to most scientific endeavors before, to analyze and confirm the final image of Sgr A*. A black hole 1,000 times smaller in mass than another will have a very similar image that will just be 1,000 times smaller. On Thursday, the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration presented the second image of such an object—this time of a black hole located at the center of our own Milky Way. This contributed to the groundwork for an Earth-sized observatory that is now the Event Horizon Telescope.

It took eight radio telescopes all over Earth working in perfect harmony to do it, but scientists successfully snapped the first photo of the black hole at ...

“We live out in the suburbs [in a spiral arm of the galaxy]. Things are calm out here.” Dr. Bower said it is probably more typical of what’s at the center of most galaxies, “just sitting there doing very little.” The same telescope group released the first black hole image in 2019. The picture also confirms Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity: The black hole is precisely the size that Einstein’s equations dictate. Astronomers worked with data collected in 2017 to get the new images. Getting a good image was a challenge; previous efforts found the black hole too jumpy.

During the first billion years of the universe, winds blown by supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies were much more frequent and more powerful ...

"The large investment of time dedicated to observing these objects and the unique capacities of X-shooter in terms of efficiency, wavelength coverage and resolving power have allowed us to obtain very good quality spectra which enabled this interesting result." "Unlike what we observe in the universe closer to us, we discovered that black hole winds in the young universe are very frequent, have high speeds up to 17 percent of the speed of light, and inject large amounts of energy into their host galaxy." Our observations enabled us to identify this mechanism in the black hole winds produced when the universe was 0.5 to 1 billion years old." The energy injected by winds would have been thus able to halt further matter accretion onto the black hole, slowing down its growth and kicking off a "common evolution" phase between the black hole and its host galaxy. During the first billion years of the universe, winds blown by supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies were much more frequent and more powerful than those observed in today's galaxies, some 13 billion years later. The host galaxies of these quasars were observed around cosmic dawn, when the universe was between 500 million and 1 billion years old.

And because the Event Horizon Telescope is already an array the size of Earth, moving its observatories farther apart is quite a challenge. Scientists have ...

"This image is actually one of the sharpest images you've ever seen," Bouman said. But for today, the sharpness of the new Sagittarius A* image is as best as we can make it for now given the amount of data involved. So much data was involved that EHT investigators had to ship hard drives to one another for the science work, rather than streaming over the Internet.

An image of what looks like a glowing orange donut is actually the first picture of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, ...

You may click on “Your Choices” below to learn about and use cookie management tools to limit use of cookies when you visit NPR’s sites. If you click “Agree and Continue” below, you acknowledge that your cookie choices in those tools will be respected and that you otherwise agree to the use of cookies on NPR’s sites. NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic.

Astronomers have developed a technique that could measure the 'shadows' of black hole binary systems in distant galaxies. Share ...

There’s never been a more important time to explain the facts, cherish evidence-based knowledge and to showcase the latest scientific, technological and engineering breakthroughs. Please support us by making a donation or purchasing a subscription today. So, if scientists measure how long it lasts, they can estimate the size and shape of this shadow. This could give researchers an easier way to measure black holes which are smaller than M87 and reside in more distant galaxies. The image was made possible thanks to the Event Horizon Telescope – a global network of synchronised radio dishes which act as one giant telescope. At first, the team thought this was the result of a coding mistake, but eventually realised that each dip in brightness closely matched the time taken for the black hole closest to the viewer to pass in front of the shadow of the black hole at the back.

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

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.

Nearly all galaxies, including our own, are believed to have these giant black holes at their center, where light and matter cannot escape, ...

“We live out in the suburbs (in a spiral arm of the galaxy). Things are calm out here.” The same telescope group released the first black hole image in 2019. The picture also confirms Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity: The black hole is precisely the size that Einstein’s equations dictate. The Milky Way black hole is called Sagittarius A(asterisk), near the border of Sagittarius and Scorpius constellations. Getting a good image was a challenge; previous efforts found the black hole too jumpy. Astronomers believe nearly all galaxies, including our own, have these giant black holes at their bustling and crowded center, where light and matter cannot escape, making it extremely hard to get images of them.

All our previous knowledge about the supermassive black hole were based on indirect measurements of stars looping around the galactic centre, snared in its ...

"Sgr A* is the view of a standard black hole. Sgr A* is exciting because it is common." She said the work was just the beginning of our understanding of what is going on with the black hole lurking in the middle of our galaxy The middle of the Milky Way is dominated by a huge bulge of stars surrounding the black hole. At around 4 million times the mass of our Sun, Sgr A* is much smaller than M87, which weighs in at around 6.5 billion times the mass of our Sun. "Because the size of a black hole shadow is proportional to its mass, our image tells us that the mass of Sgr A* is 4 million times greater than that of our Sun," said Sara Issaoun, an astrophysicist at Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Radboud University in the Netherlands.

Scientists say the supermassive black hole devours any matter wandering within its gargantuan gravitational pull.

And finally there are the supermassive black holes that inhabit the centre of most galaxies. The Event Horizon Telescope is a global network of observatories working collectively to observe radio sources associated with black holes. The M87 black hole is far more distant and massive than Sagittarius A*, situated about 54 million light-years from Earth with a mass 6.5 billion times that of our sun. In contrast, M87’s diameter would encompass the entirely of our solar system. The black hole - called Sagittarius A*, or SgrA* - is only the second one ever to be imaged. The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy that contains at least 100 billion stars.

"We finally have the first look at our Milky Way black hole, Sagittarius A*," an international team of astrophysicists and researchers from the Event ...

You may click on “Your Choices” below to learn about and use cookie management tools to limit use of cookies when you visit NPR’s sites. If you click “Agree and Continue” below, you acknowledge that your cookie choices in those tools will be respected and that you otherwise agree to the use of cookies on NPR’s sites. NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic.

Astronomers say the picture does not portray a voracious cosmic destroyer but rather a 'gentle giant' on a near-starvation diet.

The same telescope group released the first black hole image in 2019. The picture also confirms Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity: the black hole is precisely the size that Einstein’s equations dictate. Mr Bower said it was probably more typical of what’s at the centre of most galaxies, “just sitting there doing very little”. Astronomers worked with data collected in 2017 to get the new images. Getting a good image was a challenge; previous efforts found the black hole too jumpy. Astronomers believe nearly all galaxies, including our own, have these giant black holes at their bustling and crowded centre, where light and matter cannot escape, making it extremely hard to get images of them.

The image of Sagittarius A* - produced by a global team of scientists known as the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration - is the first, direct visual ...

said Anton Zensus of the Max Planck Institute. I think that that's just really exciting," Katie Bouman, a Caltech professor who played a key role in creating the image, told AFP. But while it took days and weeks to orbit the larger M87*, it completed rounds of Sgr A* in just minutes. "You would need a radio telescope as big as the entire Earth to take a picture of something that small. Constructing a telescope dish that big is of course impossible. Australian scientists are part of the international team that has captured an image of a supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy.

"It's the dawn of a new era of black hole physics," the Event Horizon Telescope team said as it released the first-ever image of supermassive black hole in the ...

"Perhaps more importantly, the one in M87 launches a powerful jet that extends as far as the edge of that galaxy. "The one in M87 is accumulating matter at a significantly faster rate than Sgr A*," she said. In the case of Sgr A*, scientists have previously observed stars orbiting around the Milky Way's center. It took several years to refine our image and confirm what we had, but we prevailed." Black holes have long been a source of public fascination, but they also pose notorious challenges to researchers, mainly because their gravitational fields are so strong that they either bend light or prevent it from escaping entirely. The black hole is often referred to as Sgr A*, pronounced sadge ay star.

The first ever image of the black hole at the center of our galaxy has been released by scientists, who say it shows Albert Einstein was right about ...

You may click on “Your Choices” below to learn about and use cookie management tools to limit use of cookies when you visit NPR’s sites. If you click “Agree and Continue” below, you acknowledge that your cookie choices in those tools will be respected and that you otherwise agree to the use of cookies on NPR’s sites. NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic.