The two images can now be compared to gain valuable insight on the inner workings of these supermassive giants and how they interact with their surroundings, a process thought to play a key role in shaping the formation and evolution of galaxies. In April 2017, eight radio observatories on six mountains on four continents stared on and off at a pair of black holes for 10 days - Sgr A* and a second that lies at the heart of the elliptical galaxy M87.įrom that observation data, which was then crunched by supercomputer algorithms, came the image of the M87 black hole as well as the one just released.
The researchers produced the picture with observations from the Event Horizon Telescope, a worldwide network of radio telescopes that link together to form a single Earth-sized virtual instrument. “That is what we’ve measured in our image.” “The cool thing about Sgr A* is that we know its mass with great accuracy so we know exactly what Einstein’s theory of relativity should predict for how big the shadow in the center should be - around 50 micro-arcseconds in angular size or 60 million kilometers across,” Issaoun said.
Issaoun also pointed out that the new view further cements Einstein’s theories on gravity and relativity. “These properties, this knowledge of the fundamental properties of the black hole will help us study the astrophysics of the black hole in more detail later on,” Issaoun said. She said the new image reveals some key details about the black hole that were previously unknown, including that one side of the black hole is almost directly facing Earth. NASA Einstein Fellow at the CfA Sara Issaoun worked on observations and imaging for the EHT team and discussed the image at the European press conference in Germany. “While M87 had one of the biggest black holes in the universe and it launches a jet that pierces its entire galaxy, Sgr A* is giving us a view into the much more standard state of black holes, quiet and quiescent,” said Johnson.
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