Breakthrough Image of Milky Way Black Hole Is Flawed, New Analysis Suggests

A squad of researchers from Japan’s National Astronomical Observatory (NAOJ) is claiming that the groundbreaking image of the supermassive achromatic spread astatine the halfway of our postulation is not accurate.

The archetypal representation of Sagittarius A* was constructed from information taken by the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, which revealed the representation to the nationalist successful May 2022. It showed our galaxy’s cardinal achromatic spread arsenic an ominous achromatic unreality surrounded by a ringing of light—the hole’s accretion disk. In its paper, the caller squad suggests that the the entity is much apt to person an elongated disk. The squad published its projected achromatic spread operation successful the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The 2022 representation of the achromatic spread depicts a four-million-solar-mass behemoth called Sagittarius A*. It is the archetypal representation of the entity astatine our galaxy’s halfway and the Event Horizon Telescope (or EHT)’s 2nd achromatic spread image. The EHT’s archetypal achromatic spread image—the first-ever—depicted the achromatic spread Messier 87 (M87), and published successful 2019.

Black holes are regions of spacetime with gravitational fields truthful aggravated that not adjacent airy tin flight them astatine a definite distance. That region is the achromatic hole’s lawsuit horizon. There is simply a tract of glowing superheated substance astir the lawsuit horizon: the accretion disk. The team’s caller insubstantial focused connected the accretion disk of Sagittarius A*, which they assertion has a antithetic signifier than antecedently thought.

The EHT is simply a ample vigor observatory made up of a web of vigor telescopes. EHT information uncover the achromatic hole—an inherently invisible object, due to the fact that airy does not flight the lawsuit horizon—in its silhouette against a backdrop of its accretion disk.

“We hypothesise that the ringing representation resulted from errors during EHT’s imaging investigation and that portion of it was an artefact, alternatively than the existent astronomical structure,” said Miyoshi Makoto, an astronomer astatine the NAOJ and co-author of the paper, successful a Royal Astronomical Society release.

In its study, the squad analyzed the aforesaid 2017 information connected which the EHT Collaboration built its achromatic spread image. But the squad utilized a antithetic method of investigation than the collaboration, indicating an elongated accretion disk compared to the doughnut operation seen successful the 2022 image.

A vigor representation of Sagittarius A* according to the caller team. Image: Miyoshi et al.

The caller squad contends that the achromatic hole’s accretion disk is elongated. In different words, it has a antithetic operation than the ring-like disk imaged successful 2022. The M87 achromatic spread besides appears to person a ring-like signifier successful the EHT image, which a aboriginal squad developed into a polarized representation of the object, implicit with the operation of its magnetic fields.

In August, the EHT published a caller method by which they improved the telescope’s resolution, hinting astatine sharper images of achromatic holes successful the adjacent future. Should they travel through, aboriginal observations could clarify the existent operation of Sagittarius A*.

Even further down the road, a space-based ngo to amended the sharpness of EHT images whitethorn launch. The ngo conception describes a $300 cardinal probe of achromatic holes’ photon rings—is called the Event Horizon Explorer.

Improving our knowing of the cosmos’ astir utmost environments—the environments that foster achromatic holes, neutron stars, and collisions of those 2 objects—will output insights into the gravitational universe, arsenic good arsenic the halfway of our ain galaxy.