Astronomers resolve magnetic fields around Black Hole M87*

29 March 2021

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, who produced the very first photograph of a black hole in 2019, have presented a new type of image of the same black hole in the centre of the M87 galaxy. The new image shows what this object looks like in polarised light. This is the first time ever that astronomers have been able to measure polarisation – a signature of electro-magnetic fields – so close to the edge of a black hole. Astronomers hope that these observations will help them to explain how the galaxy, which is 55 million light-years away, is able to ‘launch’ powerful jets from its core. UvA scientists Koushik Chatterjee, Doosoo Joon, Sera Markoff, Gibwa Musoke and Oliver Porth collaborated on the research.

Composite image showing how the M87 system looked, across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. — Caption: Composite image showing how the M87 system looked, across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, during the Event Horizon Telescope’s April 2017 campaign to take the iconic first image of a black hole. Requiring 19 different facilities on the Earth and in space, this image reveals the enormous scales spanned by the black hole and it forward-pointing jet, launched just outside the event horizon and spanning the entire galaxy. Credit: the EHT Multi-Wavelength Science Working Group; the EHT Collaboration; ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); the EVN; the EAVN Collaboration; VLBA (NRAO); the GMVA; the Hubble Space Telescope, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory; the Chandra X-ray Observatory; the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array; the Fermi-LAT Collaboration; the H.E.S.S. collaboration; the MAGIC collaboration; the VERITAS collaboration; NASA and ESA. Composition by J.C. Algaba.