Two years ago, astronomers revealed the first-ever direct
images of a black hole. Now, the collaboration behind the historic image has released a new version that shows the polarization of the light around the object.
Black holes are notoriously hard to see – after all, light itself can’t escape from their extreme gravitational pull. But there is a way to at least see their silhouette, thanks to the intense environment these objects create around themselves. As black holes pull in huge amounts of dust and gas, this material heats up and glows brightly in what’s called an accretion disc, leaving a circular shadow in the center.
And that’s just what the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration captured in the image released in April 2019. That now-iconic image shows the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87, located in the Virgo cluster about 55 million light-years away.
newatlas.com
