The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project, renowned for capturing the first-ever image of a black hole, has achieved another monumental breakthrough. This time, the team has made the highest-resolution observations of space ever recorded from Earth’s surface. The EHT leverages a global network of facilities, transforming the Earth into a colossal observatory capable of making highly precise measurements of distant galaxies.
The latest observations incorporated the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a sophisticated array of radio telescopes situated in Chile, along with other facilities in Spain, France, and Hawaii. To achieve a resolution exceeding previous observations, scientists faced a unique challenge – the telescope, already spanning the size of Earth, couldn’t be physically enlarged. Instead, they opted to observe at a higher frequency. This new approach enabled the researchers to detect light at a wavelength equivalent to 0.87 mm, promising future images of black holes with a remarkable 50% increase in detail, especially in the immediate vicinity of the black hole’s boundary.
“To comprehend the significance of this breakthrough, consider the surge in detail you experience when transitioning from black and white photographs to color,” explained Sheperd Doeleman, founding director of the EHT. “This newfound ‘color vision’ empowers us to disentangle the effects of Einstein’s gravity from the scorching gas and magnetic fields that sustain black holes and unleash powerful jets that traverse galactic distances.”
This enhanced capability is poised to produce even sharper images of black holes in the future. These sharper images will shed light on the cloud of dust and gas surrounding the edges of black holes, helping to elucidate how they consume matter and grow. The observations will also provide insights into the jets of matter that black holes expel at extraordinary speeds when feeding.
“With the EHT, we witnessed the first images of black holes through 1.3-mm wavelength observations. However, the luminous ring we observed, shaped by light bending within the black hole’s gravitational pull, appeared somewhat blurry because we were operating at the absolute limits of image sharpness,” noted Alexander Raymond, a fellow researcher. “At 0.87 mm, our images will exhibit greater sharpness and detail, potentially revealing new characteristics – both those predicted and those yet to be discovered.”
This groundbreaking research has been published in The Astronomical Journal.
