In May 2022, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) team released the first radio image of central black hole M87. It was a stunning discovery based on observations made with a range of radio telescopes around the world. They recently re-released a new, clearer image of the black hole’s “ring of light”.

Now a team of astronomers from Europe, Korea and China has gone even further. This week, they released another great image of this beast, this time in a slightly different radio range. This clearly demonstrates the connection between the supermassive black hole, its bright ring, and the famous high-speed jet.

This final image was taken with a wide variety of radio telescopes. These included the Spherical mm Very Large Base Array (GMVA), the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), and the Greenland Telescope (GLT). Their joint observations showed very fine detail in the region around the galactic core. For the first time, the three main parts of an object are shown in a single image.

Observations made in 2018 show the region in radio light emitted at a longer wavelength than the EHT image. It is 3.5mm instead of 1.3mm. “At this wavelength, we can see the jet emanating from the emission ring around the central supermassive black hole,” says Thomas Krichbaum of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy. The material flowing from M87 is an astrophysical jet. It contains superheated (ionized) matter that flows out at high velocity along the axis of rotation.

To understand the structures in the final image, we need to know more about them. We know that supermassive black holes in the cores of galaxies are extremely powerful gravitational wells. Nothing can escape because they absorb almost everything. The genesis of these monsters is still not sufficiently studied. But we can observe what they do with their neighbors.

In the case of M87, there is an accretion disk that drains material into the black hole. On the other hand, the jet helps some materials out. Understanding how such a large jet could be created is a longstanding problem in astronomy. It probably occurs as a result of some activity inside the surrounding accretion disk.

Jet formation probably also includes entangled magnetic fields. But astronomers still don’t know all the details. “We know that jets are being launched from the region surrounding black holes, but we still don’t fully understand how this actually happens,” said Ru-Shen Lu of the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory in China. To study this directly, we need to observe the source of the jet as close to the black hole as possible.”

The new image also shows how the base of the jet connects with the disk of matter spiraling into the black hole. Previous observations have shown separate appearances of this disk and jet. Therefore, it is the first time that both features are observed together. “This new image completes the picture by simultaneously showing the region around the black hole and jet,” said team member Jae-Young Kim from Kyungpuk National University in South Korea and team member Jae-Young Kim from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany. said.