The European Southern Observatory (ESO) is reporting an astronomy-ready achievement: researchers have captured the first direct visual image of a supermassive black hole and its “shadow” (in the third illustration).
The research was carried out using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a planetary-scale antenna array of eight ground-based radio telescopes. These are, in particular, the ALMA, APEX complexes, the 30-meter IRAM telescope, the James Clerk Maxwell telescope, the Alfonso Serrano Large Millimeter Telescope, the Submillimeter Array, the Submillimeter Telescope and the South Pole Telescope.
Experts managed to obtain an image of a black hole at the center of the massive galaxy Messier 87 in the constellation Virgo. The imaged object, with a mass of 6,5 billion solar masses, is located at a distance of approximately 55 million light years from us.
Using a range of calibration and imaging techniques, they revealed a ring-shaped structure with a dark central region—the “shadow” of the black hole. The "shadow" is the closest possible approximation to the image of the black hole itself, a completely dark object that does not let out any light.
It should be noted that black holes have a colossal effect on their surroundings, deforming space-time and heating the surrounding matter to extreme temperatures.
“We have received the first image of a black hole. This is a scientific achievement of extreme importance, which crowned the efforts of a team of more than 200 researchers,” the scientists say.
Source: 3dnews.ru