UCLan’s Professor Derek Ward-Thompson is part of the global research team which has discovered how it looks in polarised light
A University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) professor is part of a global team of astronomers who have today revealed a new view of the massive object at the centre of a black hole.
Professor Derek Ward-Thompson is part of the global Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, who produced the first ever image of a black hole, and this new image shows how the centre of the M87 galaxy looks in polarised light.
This is the first-time astronomers have been able to measure polarisation, a signature of magnetic fields, this close to the edge of a black hole. The observations are key to explaining how the M87 galaxy, located 55 million light-years away, is able to launch energetic jets from its core.
Professor Ward-Thompson, the Head of UCLan’s School of Natural Sciences, commented: “This unique observation means that for the first time we can map the magnetic fields around a black hole right into the region of the event horizon. This is exciting because astronomers believe that the magnetic fields are responsible for launching ionised material millions of light years into space in what we call ‘jets’, which can be ten times larger than the entire galaxy.
“This was extremely difficult to do, because not only do we have to record the intensity of the light in the manner of a camera, we also have to record its polarisation in the manner of a pair of polaroid sunglasses. So, in the same way as sunglasses dim the amount of light we see from the sun, the polariser on our telescope dims the amount of light we can see from the black hole, making it much more difficult to detect.”
"This unique observation means that for the first time we can map the magnetic fields around a black hole right into the region of the event horizon"
— Professor Derek Ward-Thompson, the Head of UCLan’s School of Natural Sciences
Monika Mościbrodzka, Coordinator of the EHT Polarimetry Working Group and Assistant Professor at Radboud Universiteit in the Netherlands, said: “We are now seeing the next crucial piece of evidence to understand how magnetic fields behave around black holes, and how activity in this very compact region of space can drive powerful jets that extend far beyond the galaxy.”
On 10 April 2019, scientists released the first ever image of a black hole, revealing a bright ring-like structure with a dark central region — the black hole’s shadow. Since then, the EHT collaboration has delved deeper into the data on the supermassive object at the heart of the M87 galaxy collected in 2017. They have discovered that a significant fraction of the light around the black hole is polarised.
“This work is a major milestone: the polarisation of light carries information that allows us to better understand the physics behind the image we saw in April 2019, which was not possible before,” explains Iván Martí-Vidal, also Coordinator of the EHT Polarimetry Working Group and GenT Distinguished Researcher at the Universitat de València, Spain.
He adds that “unveiling this new polarised-light image required years of work due to the complex techniques involved in obtaining and analysing the data.”
Light becomes polarised when it goes through certain filters, like the lenses of polarised sunglasses, or when it is emitted in hot regions of space that are magnetised. In the same way polarised sunglasses help us see better by reducing reflections and glare from bright surfaces, astronomers can sharpen their vision of the region around the black hole by looking at how the light originating from there is polarised. Specifically, polarisation allows astronomers to map the magnetic field lines present at the inner edge of the black hole.
EHT collaboration member Andrew Chael, a NASA Hubble Fellow at the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science and the Princeton Gravity Initiative in the USA, commented: “The newly published polarised images are key to understanding how the magnetic field allows the black hole to 'eat' matter and launch powerful jets.”
"We are now seeing the next crucial piece of evidence to understand how magnetic fields behave around black holes, and how activity in this very compact region of space can drive powerful jets that extend far beyond the galaxy"
— Monika Mościbrodzka, Coordinator of the Event Horizon Telescope Polarimetry Working Group
The bright jets of energy and matter that emerge from M87’s core and extend at least 5,000 light-years from its centre are one of the galaxy’s most mysterious and energetic features. Most matter lying close to the edge of a black hole falls in. However, some of the surrounding particles escape moments before capture and are blown far out into space in the form of jets.
Astronomers have relied on different models of how matter behaves near the black hole to better understand this process. But they still don’t know exactly how jets larger than the galaxy are launched from its central region, which is as small in size as the Solar System, nor how exactly matter falls into the black hole. With the new EHT image of the black hole and its shadow in polarised light, astronomers managed for the first time to look into the region just outside the black hole where this interplay between matter flowing in and being ejected out is happening.
The observations provide new information about the structure of the magnetic fields just outside the black hole. The team found that only theoretical models featuring strongly magnetised gas can explain what they are seeing at the event horizon.
“The observations suggest that the magnetic fields at the black hole’s edge are strong enough to push back on the hot gas and help it resist gravity’s pull. Only the gas that slips through the field can spiral inwards to the event horizon,” explains Jason Dexter, Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, USA, and coordinator of the EHT Theory Working Group.
To observe the heart of the M87 galaxy, the collaboration linked eight telescopes around the world, including the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, which UCLan helps to finance, to create a virtual Earth-sized telescope, the EHT. The impressive resolution obtained with the EHT is equivalent to that needed to measure the length of a credit card on the surface of the Moon.
This setup allowed the team to directly observe the black hole shadow and the ring of light around it, with the new polarised-light image clearly showing that the ring is magnetised. The results are published today in two separate papers in The Astrophysical Journal Letters by the EHT collaboration. The research involved more than 300 researchers from multiple organisations and universities worldwide.
EHT collaboration member Jongho Park, an East Asian Core Observatories Association Fellow at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics in Taipei, added: "The EHT is making rapid advancements, with technological upgrades being done to the network and new observatories being added. We expect future EHT observations to reveal more accurately the magnetic field structure around the black hole and to tell us more about the physics of the hot gas in this region."
24 March 2021
