High-resolution images of black holes captured by the Event Horizon Telescope

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has completed a recent observation that achieved the sharpest resolution ever achieved with ground-based equipment, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) announced. The captured supermassive black holes were M87* and Sgr A*Instruments spread across the planet, such as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), were used.

The Event Horizon Telescope is a collaboration between several telescopes and radio telescopes around the Earth that aims to create an interconnected system providing high-resolution images. The EHT was responsible for capturing the first “photograph” of a black hole, specifically M87*, published on April 10, 2019.

Typically, scientists need to use much larger telescopes to capture high-resolution ‘photographs.’ And that’s certainly not a problem for the EHT, because it’s a ‘telescope’ that covers the entire Earth.

But the approach to increasing resolution was different, as the instrument team used a shorter wavelength observation method. Using this technique, They detected light from the centers of distant galaxies using a frequency of around 345 GHz. A study on the subject was published in the scientific journal The Astronomical Journal.

“We saw the first images of black holes using 1.3 mm wavelength observations with the EHT, but the bright ring we saw, created by the bending of light in the black hole’s gravity, still appeared blurry because we were at the absolute limits of how sharp we could make images,” said Alexander Raymond, one of the lead authors of the study.

The clearest photo of a black hole

To produce the ‘photographs’, scientists combined observations of distant galaxies with images of the supermassive black holes M87* and Sgr A* at a frequency of 230. GHz. In an official statement, ESO said the observations were part of a technical test to better understand the possibilities of the EHT, including the possibility of capturing data from black holes that are smaller and more distant than the other two.

The frequency of 345 GHz is equivalent to a wavelength of 0.87 mm and its detection is considered a breakthrough in this field. The Event Horizon Telescope team predicts that in the future it will be possible to produce images of black holes that are much more detailed than current versions.

“These VLBI signal detections at 0.87 mm are groundbreaking as they open a new observational window for the study of supermassive black holes. In the future, the IRAM telescopes ALMA and APEX in Spain (IRAM-30m) and France (NOEMA) will enable simultaneous imaging of smaller and weaker emissions than previously possible at two wavelengths, 1.3 mm and 0.87 mm,” said Thomas Krichbaum, one of the authors of the study.

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