Black hole pictured for first time — in spectacular detail

Black hole pictured for first time — in spectacular detail



Astronomers were surprised to find a perpendicular structure in the region of the quasar’s accretion disk where the jets are ejected. (J.Y. Kim (MPIfR), Boston University Blazar Program (VLBA and GMVA), and Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration)

Spectacular image reveals quasar jets

The team that a year ago gave the world the first image of a black hole has now presented images of another cosmic behemoth — this time a quasar, lying almost halfway across the observable Universe. The Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, which uses a network of radio telescopes scattered around the Earth, used quasar 3C 279 as a calibrator when they imaged black hole M87*. The observations provided an unprecedented look at 3C 279 itself, including rapid changes in its powerful jets, which stream matter out into intergalactic space at close to the speed of light.

BBC News | 4 min readReference: Astronomy & Astrophysics paper