Last year, a global collaboration of scientists made history with the unveiling of the very first direct image of a black hole. We now have a gorgeous sequel – the closest look at the jet blast from the supermassive black hole.
The supermassive black hole sits at the heart of the extremely bright quasar 3C 279, 5 billion light-years from Earth. Quasars are some of the brightest space objects we know of: galaxies with colossal black holes.
The recently published results are actually derived from the same observations that gave the historical photograph of the black hole. 3C 279 was one of four secondary objects in a series of observations – and now astronomers have seen exciting results.
We already know that when matter falls into the nothingness of a hungry supermassive black hole, some of that material – the surrounding gas and dust – accelerates to near the speed of light. As a result, the black hole spews out relativistic jets of the most rapidly propagating particles in the known universe.
It is one of the explosive jets that the EHT team captured in unprecedented detail, tracing all the way back to the black hole's accretion disk.
Extraordinary results for the science of black holes have been obtained – relying on simulations and low-resolution observations for so long, we still do not understand how these mysterious objects function and what actually powers the jet jets that we can see.
“More detailed information on the properties of the source, such as the configuration of the magnetic field and the detailed energy balance of the jet, will be the subject of further research,” the authors conclude in the article.
The results are published in Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Sources: Photo: (J.Y. Kim (MPIfR) / Boston University Blazar Program (VLBA and GMVA) / EHT Collaboration)
