An international research team releases new images of the giant black hole in the Milky Way Galaxy, Sagittarius A* | Satellite portal website sorae

This is a radio wave observation of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (about 4 million times the mass of the Sun), which lies about 27,000 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. This image was created based on the data obtained. Released by the international research team Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) on March 27, 2024.

The EHT is a research team that observes and studies supermassive black holes that are believed to exist at the center of galaxies. So far, only 2019 images have captured the region around the supermassive black hole (about 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun) located at the center of the elliptical galaxy M87, about 55 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Virgo. Released in April 2022 Images of Sagittarius A*, the center of the Milky Way, will be released for the first time in May 2022. For images of supermassive black holes released by the EHT, please also see related articles below.

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・What we can learn from the variable and non-variable parts of the M87 black hole imaged for the first time in a year (January 26, 2024)
・Successfully captured the structure surrounding a supermassive black hole and the root jets at the same time for the first time (April 27, 2023)
・[تعليق]The supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* in the Milky Way has finally been successfully photographed! His chart was captured (May 13, 2022)

What the EHT has released this time is a polarization image of the area around Sagittarius A*, drawn based on the analysis of observation data obtained in April 2017. Polarized light is electromagnetic waves (light) that propagate through space while vibrating in a certain direction. Electromagnetic waves are originally a mixture of waves vibrating in different directions, but when the vibrations are biased for some reason, they are called polarized light. In everyday life, it is used in products such as polarized sunglasses, which reduce glare by cutting off polarized light reflecting from surfaces such as water.

In the image above, the direction of polarization of radio waves coming from around Sagittarius A* is represented by a line. According to the EHT, particles orbiting around the magnetic field lines around the black hole create a polarization pattern perpendicular to the magnetic field lines. In other words, by examining the polarization of radio waves coming from around the black hole, we can visualize the magnetic field lines around the black hole indirectly.

The EHT has already performed a similar analysis of the supermassive black hole M87, and polarization images around the black hole were released in March 2021. According to Professor Mariafelicia De Laurentiis of the University of Naples, Federico II, who is deputy project scientist for the EHT, despite the differences in properties such as mass and number of galaxies Existing, since the magnetic field structures of supermassive black holes at site A* and M87 are very similar, physical processes such as gas supply and jet emission (narrow, high-speed gas streams) are common in supermassive black holes, he commented, “This is an important discovery that suggests this may be the case.” That this is the case.

The EHT has been monitoring Sagittarius A* since 2017, and the last observation is scheduled to take place in April 2024. With each new observation, updates are made such as adding telescopes, expanding the bandwidth of radio waves used for observations, and introducing new observing frequencies, so it is said that… The images obtained improve every year. Compared to the supermassive black hole in M87, the structure around Sagittarius A* changes in a shorter period of time, so advanced techniques are needed to image it. It is hoped that the EHT expansion, planned over the next 10 years, will produce highly reliable videos that may shed light on jet ejections not clearly seen in Sagittarius A*.

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• Event horizon telescope Astronomers have detected strong magnetic fields rising at the edge of the central black hole in the Milky Way
• EHT-Japan – The discovery of a strong magnetic field swirling around the edge of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy
• Which Astronomers have detected strong magnetic fields rising at the edge of the central black hole in the Milky Way

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