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The now iconic image of M87’s black hole monster – an object described as “the most perfect macroscopic objects in the universe, the only elements in their construction are our concepts of space and time” – captured in April 2019 by the team of Event Horizon highlighted the eerie orange glow of its shadow.
The image, the EHT team reported, marked the culmination of years of work undertaken by a team of 200 scientists in 59 institutes in 18 countries, drawing on data collected from eight telescopes whose locations range from Hawaii to the South Pole, creating the equivalent of a lens the size of planet Earth that is 4,000 times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope.
The Shadow Knows – Film about the history of the visible universe
The behemoth image captured light from the entire universe enveloping the object in a series of nested rings, astrophysicist Peter Galison at Harvard said. “As we peer into these rings, we are looking at the light from all over the visible universe, we are seeing further and further into the past, a film, so to speak, about the history of the visible universe.”
“Hall of Mirrors”: the orange glow around the colossal black hole of the M87 reveals the history of the observable universe
“Revealed by a Whim of Alignment”
Today, astronomers from the Hubble Space Telescope announced that “for an alignment oddity, scientists could take a look at the structure of the disk around the black hole in nearby galaxy IC 5063, first brought to the astronomer’s attention. of Harvard’s Center for Astrophysics from a discovery by a lone city astronomer, so distinctly different from the Earth-sized EHT team of 200 scientists.
The Hubble Space Telescope observed a collection of narrow light rays and dark shadows radiating from the incredibly bright center of the active galaxy. created when the object draws stars and gas into a disk that whirls around them generating a prodigious amount of energy, producing a powerful jet of light from the falling superheated gas. “
Telltale Beams
This Hubble image of IC 5063’s heart shown at the top of the page reveals a mixture of light rays and dark shadows emanating from the fiery core of its supermassive black hole. Astronomers suggest that a ring of dusty material surrounding the black hole could cast its shadow into space. The Hubble website reports that “some of the light penetrates the cracks in the dust ring, creating light rays that resemble the spotlights that accompany the premiere of a Hollywood movie. These telltale beams offer clues to the distribution of material near the black hole that is causing the shadow play. “
“The Shadow Knows” – The EHT image reveals the anatomy of M87’s gigantic black hole
Traced back to the core of the galaxy
A team of astronomers, led by Peter Maksym of the Center for Astrophysics (CfA), have tracked the rays to the galaxy’s core, the location of an active supermassive black hole, where the monster object frantically feeds on falling material, producing a powerful superheated gas light dispenser. Although the researchers have developed several plausible theories for the light show, the CfA reports, “the most intriguing idea suggests that an inner tube-shaped ring, or torus, of dusty material surrounding the black hole is casting its shadow. in the space”.
According to Maksym’s scenario, the disk of dust around the black hole does not block all the light. The gaps in the disk allow light to radiate, creating brilliant cone-shaped rays similar to the fingers of light sometimes seen at Earth’s sunset. However, the rays in IC 5063 are happening on a much larger scale, firing at least 36,000 light years.
Throwing rays of light away from the galaxy
Some of the light hits dense areas of the ring, casting the shadow of the ring into space. These shadows appear as shapes of dark fingers interspersed with light rays. These rays and shadows are visible because the black hole and its ring are tilted sideways to the plane of the galaxy. This alignment allows the light beams to extend far beyond the galaxy.
This play of light and shadow offers a unique insight into the distribution of the material surrounding the black hole. In some areas, the material may resemble scattered clouds. If this interpretation is correct, the observations can provide an indirect probe of the speckled structure of the disc.
“I’m very excited about the shadow of the bull idea because it’s a really cool effect that I don’t think we’ve seen before in the pictures, even though it’s been speculated,” said Maksym. “Scientifically, it is showing us something that is difficult, usually impossible, to see directly. We know this phenomenon should happen, but in this case we can see the effects across the galaxy. Knowing more about torus geometry will have implications for anyone trying to understand the behavior of supermassive black holes and their environment. As a galaxy evolves, it is shaped by its central black hole. “
The study of the torus is important because it channels the material towards the black hole. If the “shadow” interpretation is accurate, the dark rays provide indirect evidence that the disc in IC 5063 could be very thin, which explains why light escapes all around the structure.
Observations of similar black holes by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have detected X-rays leaking from holes in the torus, making the structure look like Swiss cheese. The holes can be caused by the disc being stressed by internal forces, causing it to warp, Maksym said. “It is possible that the deformation creates spaces large enough for some of the light to pass through, and as the torus rotates, the beams of light could pass through the galaxy like beacons in fog,” he added.
Fascinating example of a lonely citizen’s discovery
In a fascinating example of the discovery of a lone citizen astronomer, Judy Schmidt, an amateur astronomer and artist based in Modesto, California, Harvard CfA reports, discovered dark shadows when he reworked the galaxy’s Hubble exposures in December 2019. Schmidt regularly collects the Hubble archive for interesting observations that can transform into beautiful pictures. He shared those images on his Twitter feed with his many followers, one of whom was Peter Maksym.
“I noticed the dark rays almost immediately after opening the file in Photoshop and started working on improving them to make sure what I thought I was seeing was there. I couldn’t see them in the archive thumbnails or the stretched image preview in FITS Liberator, “said Schmidt, adding that when he first saw what appeared to be shadows, he thought,” That’s not possible, right ? “In his first tweets about the phenomena, Schmidt asked his followers, ‘Are these cones I try to see real?’ And ‘What are they? This is an active galaxy with a supermassive black hole in the middle. Is it casting shadows the size of a galaxy? Or are they just streams of stars? “
It didn’t take long for Maksym and other scientists to notice the tweet and start speculating, Harvard CfA reports, which ultimately led to the formation of the research team and discovery.
“Judy has a keen eye for what seems strange, which, as in this case, can have important scientific implications. In December, he noticed some “dark rays” extending from the core of the galaxy IC 5063 and tweeted to his followers asking if they could be anything of interest, “said Maksym, whose interest was immediately piqued as he was already working on the same galaxy from a different scientific angle. “Many of us stepped in and started speculating on what could be causing the rays, and at first we really had no idea. When you read the Twitter thread, you can see how the ideas came together developed in real time and turned into this very unusual research “.
“Older images from ground-based telescopes have perhaps shown clues to this type of structure, but the galaxy itself is such a mess that you would never imagine this is what’s going on without Hubble,” explained Maksym. “Hubble has sharp images, is sensitive to faint things, and has a large enough field of view to see the entire galaxy.”
The Daily Galaxy, Sam Cabot, via Harvard CfA and Hubble Site
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