By SHIORI OGAWA/ Staff Writer
April 15, 2021 at 15:54 JST
Japanese, U.S. and European scientists using 19 telescopes around the world captured the first image of jets of particles emitting from a black hole at incredible speeds.
Images of the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy about 55 million light years away were first released in 2019, but at that time there was no jet captured.
The black hole has been known for alternating between very bright and active periods and darker ones. The recently released images were actually observed in 2019 and put together by the international team of scientists.
An analysis led to the finding of one jet of particles stretching about 0.3 light year from the black hole and another extending as long as 5,000 light years.
“We want to uncover the causes of the intense fluctuations at the black hole by continuing with simultaneous observations of radio waves and gamma rays,” Kazuhiro Hada, an assistant professor at the Mizusawa VLBI Observatory of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, said.
The latest findings were published in the scientific journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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