The clearest image of a black hole has been published

According to RCO News Agency, The use of Earth-based Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) data has set a new standard for ground-based observations.

Now, in a rare feat, the Event Horizon Telescope team has achieved the highest resolution of a black hole hidden at the heart of a distant galaxy.

The Event Horizon Telescope is a global network of radio telescopes that work together to create a virtual Earth-sized observing instrument.

In these experimental observations, the Event Horizon Telescope detected light from distant galaxies at a frequency of 345 GHz, which corresponds to a wavelength of 0.87 mm.

This feat paves the way for clearer pictures of cosmic monsters and reveals new features and insights into their behavior. In fact, in the future, the Event Horizon Telescope will display images of black holes 50% clearer than Earth.

“We saw the first images of black holes with the detection of radio waves at 230 GHz with the Event Horizon Telescope, but the bright ring that we saw was caused by the bending of light by the black hole’s gravity,” said Alexandre Raymond, the head of the study.

He added: “At 345 GHz, our images are sharper and more detailed, which in turn reveals new features, both those previously predicted and perhaps some that we didn’t know about before.”

High frequency image

The Event Horizon Telescope uses the Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) technique to create a virtual telescope the size of the entire planet.

The Event Horizon Telescope is famous for capturing the first image of the super black hole *M87 located at the center of the galaxy M87 in 2019. The telescope also photographed the *Sgr A black hole at the center of the Milky Way in 2022.

It is worth mentioning that the current observation of this telescope is the first observation with the highest frequency in the range of 345 GHz, which was carried out using the VLBI technique.

While individual telescopes can observe the night sky at 345 GHz, the VLBI technique presents significant challenges at this frequency. For example, atmospheric water vapor acts as a major barrier to black hole observations at 345 GHz because it absorbs signals stronger than 230 GHz.

For these high-resolution observations, the Event Horizon Telescope operations team therefore improved the telescope’s sensitivity to use the VLBI method at 345 GHz. This was made possible by a combination of technological advances, including increased bandwidth. In addition, a strategic planning such as waiting for favorable weather conditions played a key role at all observation sites.

Clearer images in the future

In this experiment, a combination of powerful telescopes including the Atacama Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA), the Atacama Orbiter Experiment (APEX), the Northern Broad Millimeter Array (NOEMA), the Submillimeter Array (SMA) and the Greenland Telescope were used.

The power of these advanced telescopes combined to achieve a remarkable resolution of 19 microarcseconds.

Nimesh Patel, an astrophysicist at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said: “The strongest observing sites on Earth are at high altitudes, where the clarity and stability of the atmosphere is optimal, but weather conditions are also important.”

He added: “We are now beginning to overcome fundamental problems in sensitivity, such as weather, with high-bandwidth systems that process and record wider parts of the radio spectrum.”

According to the researchers’ press release, this latest feat of the Event Horizon Telescope brings experts closer to making high-quality images of black holes. They can even make movies of the event horizon region of black holes, the point of no return for matter falling into a black hole.

The future of black hole imaging is bright, as the ngEHT project promises to significantly enhance the network of event horizon telescopes. It is expected that new antennas will be added and existing antennas will be upgraded.

These findings have been published in the Astronomical Journal.

end of message