Astronomers detect gas bubble in Milky Way’s black hole

A new discovery has been made by astronomers at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile. Signs of a ‘hot spot’ (gas bubble) orbiting Sagittarius A*Black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

According to the study’s lead author, Maciek Wieltus of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, “We thought we were looking at a hot gas balloon orbiting Sagittarius A* in an orbit similar to the size of the planet. Mercury, but it makes a full turn in about 70 minutes.“

But for this observation to be true, the Polish astrophysicist explains: [o ponto quente] Movements must be large, about 30% of the speed of light”. The observations were made during an international collaboration with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), the “black hole hunter” project that connects the world’s largest telescopes.

How did Atacama astronomers discover the ‘hot spot’?

Wielgus and colleagues were able to compare ALMA data with other EHT observations of Sagittarius A* at one of these spherical radio telescope mounts in April 2017. Surprisingly, his studies based on polarized radio emission from the black hole turned out to be more powerful.

Coincidentally, some observations were made just after a burst of X-ray energy emanating from the center of the Milky Way and detected by NASA’s Chandra Space Telescope. The novelty, Wiegas explains, is that this type of explosion, previously limited to X-ray and infrared observations of Sagittarius, “Hotspots in orbit are also present in radio observations”Like ALMA’s.

With this, the expectation of the team is that in the future Observe these gas clusters with EHT partners, Until one day, Wielgus said, “We’re free to say we ‘know’ what’s going on in Sagittarius A*.”

ARTICLE – Astronomy and Astrophysics – DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202244493.