Photo of an active black hole Video – Space and Astronomy

After the shooting is over The first historical photograph of the black hole, Astronomers get a jet image of fiery plasma, without destroying an active black hole, by one of these cosmic monsters, swallowing millions of times more matter than the Sun. The protagonist, Centaurus A, is a galaxy about 11 million light-years from the Milky Way galaxy. This photo, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, was obtained from the same international collaboration that produced the first image of a black hole in 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). Italy, in collaboration with the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) and the National Institute of Atomic Physics (INFN), Michael Johnson of the German Max Planck Institute for Radiostronomy participated in the new research.

As in the first photo of a black hole, researchers in the EHT collaboration have worked together with several telescopes around the world to obtain an Earth-sized virtual telescope, the Event Horizon Telescope.
The photographed jet is made of material when it falls into a black hole, and is absorbed by the colossal gravitational force of this cosmic monster, which is capable of swallowing everything within range, including light.

The black hole has less mass than the Galaxy M87, the protagonist of the photo of Centaurus A 2019, but the jets emitted by the two black holes are very similar, note EHT researchers. Therefore, the results suggest that black holes may function similarly in different masses and sizes.
The hypothesis of EHT researchers is that larger black holes are expanded versions of their lighter counterparts.

From left: The jet image of the black hole Centaurus A is available before being obtained from the Ehd Collaboration (center) The M87 jet of the black hole on the right (Source: Natural Astronomy)

“The mechanisms for building these jets are not yet fully understood. It’s like opening the last matryoshka and discovering a completely different shape from the others,” said Maria Felicia de Laurentis of the University of Federico II, Naples and Infn, a member of the ANSA Science Council.

“For example, there are still questions about how jets are launched from the region near the black hole and how far they can travel,” he added. “Every time you open a window in the universe we know you’ve seen something new. The results shown today show that the Centaurs A is brighter at the edges than the center of the launched jet, and this allows theoretical models to be excluded. This behavior is reproducible. This is a surprising and new feature. , Which – completes de Laurentis – will help to better understand the jets produced by black holes “.