Astronomers have recorded for the first time, in the same image, the shadow of the black hole of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87) and the nearby jet that throws matter into space, an observation in which the Portuguese Hugo Messias has participated.
The image of the shadow of this black hole -dense and dark body of the Universe from which nothing escapes, not even light- had already been released on April 10, 2019.
This time, the same team obtained a simultaneous image of the shadow of the black hole, located in the center of the galaxy M87, and of the jet that emerges nearby and connects with the matter surrounding the black hole, they said in a statement. the european. Southern Observatory (OES), which operates one of the telescopes used in the observations, the ALMA radio telescope in Chile, with which Hugo Messias works.
“As matter orbits the black hole, it heats up and emits light. The black hole bends and captures some of this light, creating a ring-like structure around the black hole when viewed from Earth. The darkness in the center of the black hole the ring is the shadow of the black hole”, explains the OES.
The galaxy M87 is 55 million light-years from Earth and has a black hole with a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun.
The new observations were made in 2018 with a network of more than a dozen radio telescopes and will allow astronomers to study the processes that occur near the black hole.
The results of the observations were published in the scientific journal Nature.
Source: TSF
