The low activity was in some ways helpful, since it allowed astronomers to get observations so close in (it will also be helpful when we get similar observations to this for our own local supermassive black hole, Sgr A*, too). Sometimes it's a steady stream and its brightness is steady as well, sometimes a big gas cloud or star falls in and it brightens considerably, and sometimes less matter falls in and the black hole is temporarily starved, so it dims. Material falls into the black hole at different rates. But the team (over 750 scientists from almost 200 institutions and 32 countries) was able to make some preliminary conclusions based on what they've seen.įor one thing, activity from the supermassive black hole was at a historic low during the observations. For a brief moment, some of the most powerful eyes astronomers have were all locked on M87.Īll those data have been released to the astronomy public so that eager scientists can attack them and use them to hone their theoretical models. The near-simultaneous observations of the black hole and jet were made using the Event Horizon Telescope, but also Hubble (visible light), Chandra (X-rays), Fermi (gamma rays), Swift (X- and gamma rays), NuSTAR (X-rays), and more. Credit: The EHT Multi-wavelength Science Working Group the EHT Collaboration Hubble Space Telescope, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), the Chandra X-ray Observatory Understanding it can rely on multiple wavelength observations, like these from ALMA (left), Hubble (middle), and Chandra (right). The central black hole in M87 is accelerating a jet of matter away at high speeds. Observations at different wavelengths can help nail those down better. But physical models have to be used to determine the mass, and those make assumptions about some characteristics that aren't well known. The mass is determined by how it's swallowing all the material seen in those images. This type of campaign, called synoptic observations, helps astronomers understand what's going on note only at different energies but at different spatial scales around the black hole as well.įor example, the mass of the black hole is only known with an uncertainty of about 10%. Credit: The EHT Multi-wavelength Science Working Group the EHT Collaboration ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO) the EVN the EAVN Collaboration VLBA (NRAO) the GMVA the Hubble Space Telescope the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory the Chandra X-ray Observatory the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array the Fermi-LAT Collaboration the H.E.S.S collaboration the MAGIC collaboration the VERITAS collaboration NASA and ESA.Īt very nearly the same time, 19 observatories that monitor light across the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to gamma rays, also observed the black hole. Diagram of the different telescopes (names on left) used to observe M87 (middle) and their wavelengths (scale on right).
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