First image of Milky Way black hole may be inaccurate

Oct. 25 () –

The first image of the supermassive black hole at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy may not be a true reflection of your appearance, suggests new research.

Astronomers led by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) say their analysis points to the Sagittarius A star has an elongated accretion disk, unlike the “donut” shaped image with a ring shape published in 2022 by an international team called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration.

The EHT image shows a central dark region where the hole is located, surrounded by light coming from superheated gas accelerated by immense gravitational forces.

But a new article published this October 25 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society suggests that some of this appearance may actually be an artifact due to the way the image was composed. However, it is important to note that many researchers have validated the EHT imaging results, according to the authors.

Associate Professor Miyoshi Makoto of the NAOJ said in a statement: “Our image is slightly elongated in the east-west direction, and the eastern half is brighter than the western half.

“We think this appearance means that the accretion disk surrounding the black hole “It’s spinning at about 60 percent of the speed of light.”

He added: “Why, then, did the ring-shaped image emerge?” Our hypothesis is that the ring image is the result of errors during EHT image analysis and that part of it was an artifact, instead of the actual astronomical structure.”

The EHT observed Sagittarius A star in 2017 with a network of eight ground-based radio telescopes using a technique known as radio interferometry to combine results from the different telescopes.

The results of these observations were published in 2022including an image of a bright ring structure surrounding a central dark region, indicating the presence of a black hole.

Unlike typical photography, data from observations linking several widely separated radio telescopes contain many gaps in integrity, the researchers behind the new paper argue, so special algorithms are used to construct an image from the data.

In this research, the team applied widely used traditional methods to the EHT data, in contrast to the EHT’s own original analysis method.

Although the appearance of the Sagittarius A star proposed by the new paper differs from the results of the EHT team, both are plausible structures that can be obtained from the data obtained with the corresponding methods.

The researchers behind the latest study hope that with the help of new discussions by astronomers, along with improved analysis methods and data from follow-up observations made since 2018, a more reliable picture of Sagittarius A can be obtained. star.

The Milky Way, the galaxy we live in, It contains more than 100 billion stars similar to the Sun.

There are countless galaxies of this size in the universe, most of which are believed to have supermassive black holes at their centers with masses millions to billions of times that of the Sun.

These black holes swallow everything, including light, making it impossible to see the supermassive black hole itself. However, analysis of stars orbiting the black hole at high speed indicates that the Sagittarius A star has a mass about 4 million times that of the Sun.

By closely observing its surroundings, researchers can gain clues about the nature of the invisible black hole.