A jet escaping from the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy
Jan Roeder; Macek Wielgus et al. (2025)
More than a century ago, astronomer Heber Curtis noticed the first jet of a black hole – a huge stream of superheated plasma from the supermassive monster located at the center galaxy M87. Now the James Webb Space Telescope has observed this jet in great detail.
Since it was first spotted in 1918, the jet from the black hole M87, which is known to first black hole The image will be received in 2019. It has been observed by many telescopes and is perhaps the best studied black hole jet. However, many of its features still elude explanation, such as several bright areas as well as darker spiral-shaped areas. Astronomers believe this is likely caused by refocusing of the jet's beam or recombination of different filaments when encountering new material, such as a denser region of gas. But the underlying mechanisms remain mysterious.
Now, Macek Wielgus from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in Spain and colleagues studied the M87 jet using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), revealing its known bright features in more detail. They were also able to capture a nearly invisible and less frequently observed counter jet that shoots out in the opposite direction from the other side of the black hole.
Wielgus and his team took data from another study looking at M87 stars, which JWST's infrared sensors are particularly sensitive to. This overwhelming starlight made the jet difficult to see, so they had to reanalyze the data to remove the contaminating light. “This is a very practical example of what astronomers often say: one astronomer’s junk is another astronomer’s data,” Wielgus says.
The first bright spot on the jet, named by Hubble 1 after the telescope that discovered it, is thought to be caused by the compression of the jet as it enters a region of higher pressure. It's like bright diamond shaped designs visible in the exhaust of a rocket engine.
The team was also able to see the end of another, opposite M87 jet, the beam of which is usually much more difficult to see. Because it is moving away from us at close to the speed of light, Einstein's theory of special relativity means it will appear much dimmer to us than it actually is. But when this beam hits another area of gas with a different pressure, it spills out and becomes visible.
Together with the end of the visible jet closest to us, this marks the edge of the bubble of material surrounding M87. Now that the other end of the jet has been imaged in infrared with such detail, astronomers can begin to model what gas structures might be in that bubble, Wielgus says.
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