Date: 2025-01-23
Using observations from 2017 and 2018, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, which includes researchers at Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA), National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) and National Sun Yat-san University (NSYSU) in Taiwan, has deepened our understanding of the supermassive black hole at the center of Messier 87 (M87*). This study opens a new window into multi-year analysis at horizon scales by leveraging a new simulation library of super-computer-generated images which is three times larger than the library used for interpreting the 2017 observations, with more than 120,000 additional images compared to the last one. The team confirmed that M87*’s black hole rotational axis points away from Earth and demonstrated that turbulence within the accretion — rotating gas around the black hole — plays an important role in explaining the observed shift in the ring’s brightness peak compared to 2017. This research has been published on January 22, 2025 in Astronomy & Astrophysics, mark a major step forward in unraveling the complex dynamics of black hole environments.
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