Skip to main content

This incredible image shows the magnetic field of a black hole

A view of the M87 supermassive black hole in polarised light
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, which produced the first-ever image of a black hole released in 2019, has today a new view of the massive object at the center of the Messier 87 (M87) galaxy: how it looks in polarized light. This is the first time astronomers have been able to measure polarization, a signature of magnetic fields, this close to the edge of a black hole.  This image shows the polarized view of the black hole in M87. The lines mark the orientation of polarization, which is related to the magnetic field around the shadow of the black hole. EHT Collaboration

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project, the international collaboration which famously captured the first-ever image of a black hole, has released another new and unique image showing the same black hole’s magnetic field.

The collaboration involves using telescopes and arrays from around the globe to observe the same target — in this case, the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87. Following on from the first image of this black hole released in 2019, this new image shows the way that light around the black hole is polarized.

Related Videos

“This work is a major milestone: the polarization 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,” explained Iván Martí-Vidal, Coordinator of the EHT Polarimetry Working Group, in a statement. “Unveiling this new polarized-light image required years of work due to the complex techniques involved in obtaining and analyzing the data.”

This is the first time polarization of a black hole has been measured so close to its edge. By tracking the polarization of the light, researchers can see the lines of the magnetic field at the edge of the black hole.

This helps them to understand how black holes absorb dust and gas from the disks surrounding them and how they send out dramatic jets of energy that reach as far as 5,000 light-years from their center.

“The newly published polarized images are key to understanding how the magnetic field allows the black hole to ‘eat’ matter and launch powerful jets,” said EHT collaboration member Andrew Chael, a NASA Hubble Fellow at the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science and the Princeton Gravity Initiative in the US.

The EHT collaboration will continue working to observe more details about this black hole and its magnetic field in particular.

Editors' Recommendations

See Webb’s most beautiful image yet of the Pillars of Creation
By combining images of the iconic Pillars of Creation from two cameras aboard the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, the Universe has been framed in its infrared glory. Webb’s near-infrared image was fused with its mid-infrared image, setting this star-forming region ablaze with new details.

One of the most famous space images of all time is the Hubble Space Telescope's image of the Pillars of Creation, originally taken in 1995 and revisited in 2014. This stunning structure of dust and gas is located in the Eagle Nebula and is remarkable both for its beauty and for the dynamic process of star formation going on within its clouds.

Earlier this year, the James Webb Space Telescope took its own images of this natural wonder, capturing images in both the near-infrared and mid-infrared wavelengths. Now, both of Webb's images have been combined into one, showing a gorgeous new view of the famous structure.

Read more
Listen to the spooky echoes of a black hole
The black hole in V404 Cygni is actively pulling material away from a companion star — with about half the mass of the Sun — into a disk around the invisible object. A burst of X-rays from the black hole detected in 2015 created the high-energy rings from a phenomenon known as light echoes, where light bounces off of dust clouds in between the system and Earth. In these images, X-rays from Chandra are shown, along with optical data from the Pan-STARRS telescope that depict the stars in the field of view.

As well as admiring beautiful pictures of space, you can also listen to those pictures via sonifications. These take images and translate them into eerie sounds to illustrate the wonderful and strange phenomena of our universe. NASA's latest sonification illustrates the rings of X-rays that have been observed echoing around a black hole in the V404 Cygni system.

Quick Look: 'Listen' to the Light Echoes From a Black Hole

Read more
See a new star being born in stunning James Webb image
The protostar L1527, shown in this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a stunning image of the birth of a new star. As dust and gas clump together and eventually collapses under the force of gravity, it becomes a protostar: the core of a new star, rotating and forming a magnetic field, throwing off material in two dramatic jets of gas.

This process is on display in this image of the cloud L1527, taken using Webb's NIRCam instrument. Looking in the infrared, this camera can capture the clouds of material given off by the protostar which would be invisible to the human eye.

Read more