First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. I. The Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole
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Abstract
Abstract When surrounded by a transparent emission region, black holes are expected to reveal a dark shadow caused by gravitational light bending and photon capture at the event horizon. To image and study this phenomenon, we have assembled the Event Horizon Telescope, a global very long baseline interferometry array observing at a wavelength of 1.3 mm. This allows us to reconstruct event-horizon-scale images of the supermassive black hole candidate in the center of the giant elliptical galaxy M87. We have resolved the central compact radio source as an asymmetric bright emission ring with a diameter of 42 ± 3 μ as, which is circular and encompasses a central depression in brightness with a flux ratio ≳10:1. The emission ring is recovered using different calibration and imaging schemes, with its diameter and width remaining stable over four different observations carried out in different days. Overall, the observed image is consistent with expectations for the shadow of a Kerr black hole as predicted by general relativity. The asymmetry in brightness in the ring can be explained in terms of relativistic beaming of the emission from a plasma rotating close to the speed of light around a black hole. We compare our images to an extensive library of ray-traced general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of black holes and derive a central mass of M = (6.5 ± 0.7) × 10 9 M ⊙ . Our radio-wave observations thus provide powerful evidence for the presence of supermassive black holes in centers of galaxies and as the central engines of active galactic nuclei. They also present a new tool to explore gravity in its most extreme limit and on a mass scale that was so far not accessible.
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The record
- Venue
- The Astrophysical Journal Letters
- Topic
- Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations
- Field
- Physics and Astronomy
- Canadian institutions
- McGill UniversityWestern UniversityCanadian Institute for Theoretical AstrophysicsCanadian Institute for Advanced ResearchUniversity of TorontoPerimeter InstituteUniversity of Waterloo
- Funders
- Japan Society for the Promotion of ScienceDirección General de Asuntos del Personal Académico, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de MéxicoNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaDepartment of Science and Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology, IndiaIstituto Nazionale di Fisica NucleareRecruitment Program of Global ExpertsOffice of International Science and EngineeringMax-Planck-GesellschaftNational Research Foundation of KoreaGeneralitat ValencianaMinistry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and TechnologyNederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk OnderzoekChinese Academy of SciencesNational Institutes of Natural SciencesNuclear Safety and Security CommissionGordon and Betty Moore FoundationLeverhulme TrustNational Key Research and Development Program of ChinaNational Research FoundationInternational Max Planck Research School for Environmental, Cellular and Molecular MicrobiologyNational Aeronautics and Space AdministrationNational Natural Science Foundation of ChinaNational Radio Astronomy ObservatoryNational Science Foundation
- Keywords
- PhysicsSupermassive black holeAstrophysicsBlack hole (networking)Event horizonBinary black holeGalaxyIntermediate-mass black holeAstronomyStellar black holeGalactic CenterActive galactic nucleusSpin-flipGravitational waveEvent (particle physics)
- Has abstract in OpenAlex
- yes