Using ESO's Very Large #Telescope astronomers have characterised the most luminous quasar yet – the bright core of a distant #galaxy, powered by a #BlackHole whose mass grows by one Sun per day.
And it was hiding in plain sight! Automated methods had wrongly classified it as a nearby star, as it was much brighter than expected.
Great kick-off meeting of our #BlackHolistic project to make color movies of blackholes, funded by a Synergy grant of the #European Research Council #ERC. Partners from @Radboud_uni, University of #Amsterdam, #Oxford, #Turku, and #Namibia will work together, build a new submm-wave telescope in Namibia, and develop a holistic model of black holes. Also talked about societal impact with the Namibian ambassador, who was present. #astrodon#astrophysics#blackhole#astronomy
"Besides providing first images of black holes, the EHT is supremely suitable to observe astrophysical jets of plasma and their interplay with strong magnetic fields, [...] Our new findings provide new evidence that an ordered magnetic field extends throughout the heated gas enveloping the black hole."
Dr. Petroff has also shown that the Higgs boson signal was actually sparks from someone microwaving grapes, the EHT black hole photo was a frozen bagel someone left in too long, and the LIGO detection was just someone slamming the microwave door too hard.
A second research group confirms the observation of the astronomers who first imaged the black hole at the core of the galaxy M87 in 2017, this time from an entirely different 2018 data set analysed independently https://www.space.com/1st-black-hole-pictured-new-image-1-year-later. The black hole itself is named M87* (Em eighty-seven star).
The brightness peak of the #ring around #M87's supermassive #blackhole has shifted 30 degrees counterclockwise in a year. This is shown by new images released by the #EventHorizonTelescope consortium.
News Alert: New image of the famous supermassive black hole in M87. The image was taken a year later and reveals the same rings size and shadow shape, confirming our results from 2019! The intensity maximum has rotated however. Not surprising, since matter rotates around a black hole. It is actually now, where you expect it to be.
It quacks like a BH, it looks like a BH, it is a BH!
Cool. The Moon will eclipse the Galactic Center (with its black hole in the middle, but its radio emission is swamped by the surrounding gas). Dutch radio astronomy amateurs will measure and stream this live.