Breakthrough Image of Milky Way black hole is flawed, new analysis suggests
The original image of Sagittarius A*, constructed by the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration from data collected in May 2022, was revealed to the public. The image showed the central black hole of our galaxy as a dark cloud, surrounded by an accretion disc. The team’s paper suggests that it is more likely the object will have an elongated disc. The team published its proposed black hole structure in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The 2022 image of the black hole depicts a four-million-solar-mass behemoth called Sagittarius A*. This is the second black hole picture taken by the Event Horizon Telescope. It’s the first of an object that’s at the core of our galaxy. The first ever black hole image taken by the EHT, published in 2019, depicted black hole Messier (M87). The black hole’s horizon is that distance. The accretion disc is a glowing field of superheated material around the event-horizon. EHT data reveal the black hole silhouette against its accretion disc. This object is inherently invisible because light cannot escape from the event horizon. The EHT data show the black hole silhouette, which is an inherently invisible object because light cannot escape the event-horizon. This image was created by errors in the EHT imaging analysis. The team, however, used a different analysis method than the EHT Collaboration. This resulted in a more elongated disk as compared to that seen in the 2022 black hole image. Image: Miyoshi et al. The recent team claims that the black-hole’s accretion disc is elongated. It has a completely different structure from the ring-like image of 2022. In August, EHT published new methods to improve the telescope’s resolving power, hinting that sharper black hole images will be available in the near term. Future observations may clarify the structure of Sagittarius A* if they are successful. The mission concept describes a $300 million investigation of black holes’ photon rings–is called the Event Horizon Explorer.
Improving our understanding of the cosmos’ most extreme environments–the environments that foster black holes, neutron stars, and collisions of those two objects–will yield insights into the gravitational universe, as well as the core of our own galaxy.
