Science. – Unprecedented precision from the core of the Blazar thanks to the EHT – Publimetro México

Madrid 11 (European press)

Blazars are powerful active galactic cores, where supermassive black holes expel relativistic jets directed along our line of sight. The blazar can outshine our entire galaxy and can be seen from billions of light-years away using our radio telescopes.

The images reveal a curved, spiral jet emanating from a compressed quasar core. Studying the source at different angle scales is made possible by near-simultaneous observations in the RF band: EHT, operating at 230 GHz, Global Millimeter VLBI Array, operating at 86 GHz, and Ultra Long Baseline Array operating at 2.3 and 8.7 gigahertz study was published in the Astrophysical Journal.

EHT scientists have been able to map the linear-polarized emission in the interior of J1924-2914. “Our images constitute the highest image-angle resolution of quasar-polarized emissions ever obtained,” says Sarah Esson, NHFP Einstein Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and lead of this study.

“We see interesting details in the highly polarized inner core of the source; the morphology of the polarized emission indicates the presence of a twisted magnetic field structure,” Isson adds.

Understanding the emission in J1924-2914 was also very important to the recently published EHT observations of the star Sagittarius A, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. “J1924-2914 is our main calibration tool for studies of the Sagittarius star A; that means we need to understand it well, so we can use this knowledge to improve the overall density and polarization calibration of a variable source in the toughest times it is going through,” said Masek Wilgus, a scientist at the Max Institute. Planck of Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, and co-director of this study: “Sagittarius is a star.”

The EHT provides the ability to image active galactic nuclei at the shortest radio wavelengths (about 1.3 mm) and at the highest angular resolution ever achieved in astronomy, which is consistent with observing an orange on the Moon from Earth.

These properties make the EHT an ideal tool for studying the interior of aircraft and advancing our understanding of how they form and accelerate. Future EHT observations will bring images from many sources while pushing the boundaries of wavelength and resolution monitoring.