The European Southern Observatory (OES) announced Tuesday that radio telescopes have made test observations with the highest resolution ever obtained from Earth-based telescopes, and are likely to record 50 percent more detailed images of black holes in the future.
In a statement, OES, which operates two of the six radio telescopes used, ALMA and APEX, in Chile, said that after the experiment, it will likely be possible, in the future, to “obtain images of black holes that are more distant, smaller and fainter than those observed so far,” as well as “images of black holes that are 50% more detailed,” making “the region immediately following the boundary of the nearest supermassive black hole more visible.”
To see why this is such a remarkable achievement, consider the range of additional detail you get when you go from black and white photographs to black and white photographs. [fotografias] “In color,” highlights one of the experiment’s coordinators, astrophysicist Sheperd Doeleman, according to a statement from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the United States.
In practical terms, the image of a black hole—a dense, dark, and therefore invisible object in the universe, with gravitational forces so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape from it—corresponds to the image of its shadow surrounded by a bright ring structure formed by gas.
The experiment, the results of which were published Tuesday in the specialized journal Astronomical JournalIt was carried out by the international consortium of scientists Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), which participated in observing two supermassive black holes through a network of eight radio telescopes spread around the world, coordinated to work as one, which includes ALMA and APEX.
In 2019, a team of hundreds of scientists revealed to the world the first image of a supermassive black hole, in this case a silhouette of hot, luminous gas swirling around it.
It is the black hole M87*, located at the center of the galaxy M87, 55 million light-years from Earth, and its mass is 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun.
Later, in 2022, the first image of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*, was released, which is located about 27,000 light-years from Earth and has a mass of about four million times the mass of the Sun.
Portuguese astrophysicist Hugo Messias participated in both observations using ALMA.
In the now-released experimental experiment, the same consortium conducted experimental observations of distant, bright galaxies powered by massive black holes at their centers.
“However, no images were generated, because although powerful detections of the radiation emitted by several distant galaxies were made, not enough antennas were used to be able to accurately reconstruct the image from the data collected,” highlights the statement of the OES, an astronomical organization of which Portugal is a member.
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