New black hole images contain clues to cosmic mysteries
A massive effort to view a black hole in multiple ways is helping scientists untangle what happens when gravity is pushed to extremes.
In the heart of a gargantuan galaxy 55 million light-years away, a black hole with the heft of 6.5 billion suns is hurling a fountain of matter into the cosmos at near light-speed. Using an array called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), scientists harnessed radio waves to capture a mugshot of that black hole, offering our first-ever look at the extreme environment near its edge in 2019.
Two years later, the international team that delivered the astounding image, along with additional partners, has published the results of a 2017 observing campaign that simultaneously scrutinized the host galaxy, Messier 87, in multiple wavelengths.
The report, which appears today in The Astrophysical Journal, includes data from 19
