[ad_1]
Following the mind-boggling release of the first ever-captured image of a black hole, astronomers did so again, revealing a new view of the massive celestial object and shedding light on the behavior of magnetic fields near black holes.
In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration produces the very first image of a black hole, which lies at the center of the galaxy M87, 55 million light-years from Earth. The image showed a bright ring with a dark center, which is the shadow of the black hole. By capturing this image, astronomers noticed a significant amount of polarized light around the black hole. Now the collaboration has revealed a new take on the black hole, showing what it looks like in polarized light.
Polarized light waves have a different orientation and brightness compared to unpolarized light. And, just like the way light is polarized when it passes through some sunglasses, light is polarized when emitted into magnetized, hot areas of space.
Polarization being a signature of magnetic fields, this image clearly shows that the black hole ring is magnetized. This polarized view “tells us that the emission in the ring is most certainly produced by magnetic fields located very close to the event horizon”, Monika Moscibrodzka, coordinator of the EHT working group on polarimetry and assistant professor at Radboud Universiteit in the Netherlands, says Space.com.
Related: Eureka! Scientists photograph black hole for the first time
This is the first time that astronomers have been able to measure polarization so close to the edge of a black hole. Not only is this new sight of this black hole spectacular to watch, but the image reveals new information about the powerful radio jets fired from M87.
“In the first images we only showed the intensity,” Moscibrodzka said of the first image of the object released. “Now we’re adding polarization information to the top of this original image.”
“The new polarized images mark important steps in learning more about the gas near the black hole and how black holes grow and launch jets,” Jason Dexter, assistant professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and coordinator of the EHT theory working group, Space.com said in an email.
Related: What is a black hole event horizon (and what happens)?
To capture the black hole, the collaboration used eight telescopes from around the world, combining their power to create a virtual Earth-sized telescope (EHT).
“The EHT radio telescopes have receivers that record the sky’s signal in polarized light,” Ivan Marti-Vidal, also coordinator of the EHT polarimetry working group and GenT researcher emeritus at the Universitat, told Space.com. from Valencia in Spain. “These polarized receivers work in a similar fashion to the polarized sunglasses that some people use.”
By showing the black hole in M87 through polarized light, the team was able to see the object better. event horizon, which is also known as the “point of no return” because it is the point at which any matter can come close to the black hole without being entrained. They were also able to better study the interaction with the object’s accretion disk, which is a disk of hot gas and other diffuse material that falls toward a black hole and swirls around it.
The team’s observations and this new view of the object in M87 deepen scientists’ understanding of the structure of magnetic fields just outside a black hole, as it has remained a mystery how jets larger. larger than the galaxy itself are emitted from the black hole to its core.
“Astronomers have long believed that magnetic fields carried by hot gas near black holes play an important role in gas penetration and launch. relativistic jets of energetic particles in the surrounding galaxy. The polarized image we see tells us about the structure and strength of these magnetic fields very close to the black hole at M87, where the jet is launched, ”Dexter said.
Related: Images: Black holes of the universe
But these observations not only revealed magnetic fields at the edge of the black hole in M87, they also show that the gas is very strongly magnetized there.
“The main finding is that we not only see the magnetic fields near the black hole as expected, but they also appear to be strong. Our results indicate that the magnetic fields can push gas and resist stretching. The result is interesting. . clue to how black holes feed on gas and grow, ”Dexter added.
“We still don’t know all the details of how the jets are generated, but we do know that magnetic fields can play a critical role,” Marti-Vidal said. In the future, the team hopes to continue observing M87, they told Space.com, not only in polarization but also “at different wavelengths. [of light], to build a more complete picture of the environment and the probe of the black hole [the] magnetic fields in more detail, ”they added.
This work was published today (March 24) in two articles in The Astrophysical Journal Letters by the EHT collaboration, which involved more than 300 researchers from organizations around the world. You can find the papers here and here.
Email Chelsea Gohd at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
[ad_2]
Source link