Apr 27 2023

An international team of scientists has used new millimetre-wavelength observations to produce an image that shows, for the first time, both the ring-like structure that reveals the matter falling into the central black hole and the powerful relativistic jet in the prominent radio galaxy Messier 87. The image underlines for the first time the connection between the accretion flow near the central supermassive black hole and the origin of the jet. The new observations were obtained with the Global Millimetre VLBI Array (GMVA), complemented by the phased Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) and the Greenland Telescope (GLT). The addition of these two observatories has greatly enhanced the imaging capabilities of the GMVA. The results are published in the current issue of Nature.

Details of the Research

National Astronomical Observatory of Japan: Astronomers image for the first time a black hole’s accretion flow together with a powerful jet

NU's Co-Researcher

KOYAMA Shoko, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at Graduate School of Science and Technology/College of Creative Studies, Niigata University

Millimeter-VLBI image of the jet and the black hole shadow in Messier 87, obtained with the GMVA array including ALMA and  the Greenland Telescope.
Image credit: Lu et al. 2023; composition by F. Tazaki