The first black hole in the image. You can see the “moving shadows”!

In April 2019, a major breakthrough was announced when scientists were able to capture a black hole in a photo for the first time (the photo was from April 2017). It was an object called M87* from the Messier 87 galaxy, located tens of millions of light-years away from us. Now we have the opportunity to see another image of the same black hole that the team captured Event horizon telescope (eht).

The second image of the M87* black hole was also taken using the Event Horizon telescope and was taken about a year after the first image. It's done April 21, 2018 Both working effects were compared and interesting information was found there.

We can see that the bright part of the ring in both images of M87* is in different places. You can see here a 30 degree shift in position, which is what astronomers say Clear evidence of black hole rotation. This is what previous theories had already assumed, and the second image of an object from the center of the Messier M87 galaxy only confirms this. The size of the ring and shadows remain the same, but you can see the different placement.

The second image of the black hole is also clearer compared to the first image. Better results were achieved thanks to Joining the EHT with two additional radio telescopes located in Greenland and Mexico. As we know, the project is a complete network of these observatories spread around the Earth, and not a single facility.

It is worth noting that the Event Horizon telescope was also used to capture the first image of the massive black hole located at the center of the Milky Way. We are talking about an object that has a name Sagittarius A*Which amounts to about 4.3 million solar masses. This was a difficult task because the black hole in our galaxy is obscured by a layer of dust and gas, and we cannot look at it “from above.” However, the final effect of the experiment was successful.

The Event Horizon Telescope project team plans to expand it with additional observatories spread around the world. This will enhance the capabilities of the EHT and ultimately take better images.