J/A+A/681/A79 M87* EHT image (Event Horizon Tel. Coll.+, 2024)
The persistent shadow of the supermassive black hole of M87.
I. Observations, calibration, imaging and analysis.
Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, Akiyama K., Alberdi A., Alef W.,
Carlos Algaba J., Anantua R., Asada K., Azulay R., Bach U., Baczko A.-K.,
Ball D., Balokovic M., Bandyopadhyay B., Barrett J., Bauboeck M.,
Benson B.A., Bintley D., Blackburn L., Blundell R., Bouman K.L., Bower G.C.,
Boyce H., Bremer M., Brissenden R., Britzen S., Broderick A.E.,
Broguiere D., Bronzwaer T., Bustamante S., Carlstrom J.E., Chael A.,
Chan C.-k., Chang D.O., Chatterjee K., Chatterjee S., Chen M.-T., Chen Y.,
Cheng X., Cho I., Christian P., Conroy N.S., Conway J.E., Crawford T.M.,
Crew G.B., Cruz-Osorio A., Cui Y., Dahale R., Davelaar J., De Laurentis M.,
Deane R., Dempsey J., Desvignes G., Dexter J., Dhruv V., Dihingia I.K.,
Doeleman S.S., Dzib S.A., Eatough R.P., Emami R., Falcke H., Farah J.,
Fish V.L., Fomalont E., Ford H.A., Foschi M., Fraga-Encinas R.,
Freeman W.T., Friberg P., Fromm C.M., Fuentes A., Galison P., Gammie C.F.,
Garcia R., Gentaz O., Georgiev B., Goddi C., Gold R., Gomez-Ruiz A.I.,
Gomez J.L., Gu M., Gurwell M., Hada K., Haggard D., Hesper R., Heumann D.,
Ho L.C., Ho P., Honma M., Huang C.-W.L., Huang L., Hughes D.H., Ikeda S.,
Impellizzeri C.M.V., Inoue M., Issaoun S., James D.J., Jannuzi B.T.,
Janssen M., Jeter B., Jiang W., Jimenez-Rosales A., Johnson M.D.,
Jorstad S., Jones A.C., Joshi A.V., Jung T., Karuppusamy R., Kawashima T.,
Keating G.K., Kettenis M., Kim D.-J., Kim J.-Y., Kim J., Kim J., Kino M.,
Yi Koay J., Kocherlakota P., Kofuji Y., Koch P.M., Koyama S., Kramer C.,
Kramer J.A., Kramer M., Krichbaum T.P., Kuo C.-Y., La Bella N., Lee S.-S.,
Levis A., Li Z., Lico R., Lindahl G., Lindqvist M., Lisakov M., Liu J.,
Liu K., Liuzzo E., Lo W.-P., Lobanov A.P., Loinard L., Lonsdale C.J.,
Lowitz A.E., Lu R.-S., MacDonald N.R., Mao J., Marchili N., Markoff S.,
Marrone D.P., Marscher A.P., Marti-Vidal I., Matsushita S., Matthews L.D.,
Medeiros L., Menten K.M., Mizuno I., Mizuno Y., Montgomery J., Moran J.M.,
Moriyama K., Moscibrodzka M., Mulaudzi W., Mueller C., Mueller H., Mus A.,
Musoke G., Myserlis I., Nagai H., Nagar N.M., Nakamura M., Narayanan G.,
Natarajan I., Nathanail A., Navarro Fuentes S., Neilsen J., Ni C.,
Nowak M.A., Oh J., Okino H., Olivares H., Oyama T., Oezel F.,
Palumbo D.C.M., Filippos Paraschos G., Park J., Parsons H., Patel N.,
Pen U.-L., Pesce D.W., Pietu V., PopStefanija A., Porth O., Prather B.,
Psaltis D., Pu H.-Y., Ramakrishnan V., Rao R., Rawlings M.G., Raymond A.W.,
Rezzolla L., Ricarte A., Ripperda B., Roelofs F., Romero-Canizales C.,
Ros E., Roshanineshat A., Rottmann H., Roy A.L., Ruiz I., Ruszczyk C.,
Rygl K.L.J., Sanchez S., Sanchez-Argueelles D., Sanchez-Portal M.,
Sasada M., Satapathy K., Savolainen T., Schloerb F.P., Schonfeld J.,
Schuster K.-F., Shao L., Shen Z., Small D., Won Sohn B., SooHoo J.,
Sosapanta Salas L.D., Souccar K., Stanway J.S., Sun H., Tazaki F.,
Tetarenko A.J., Tiede P., Tilanus R.P.J., Titus M., Toma K., Torne P.,
Toscano T., Traianou E., Trent T., Trippe S., Turk M., van Bemmel I.,
Jan van Langevelde H., van Rossum D.R., Vos J., Wagner J., Ward-Thompson D.,
Wardle J., Washington J.E., Weintroub J., Wharton R., Wielgus M., Wiik K.,
Witzel G., Wondrak M.F., Wong G.N., Wu Q., Yadlapalli N., Yamaguchi P.,
Yfantis A., Yoon D., Young A., Younsi Z., Yu W., Yuan F., Yuan Y.-F.,
Zensus J.A., Zhang S., Zhao G.-Y., Zhao S.-S., Allardi A., Chang S.-H.,
Chang C.-C., Chang S.-C., Chen C.-C., Chilson R., Faber A., Gale D.M.,
Han C.-C., Han K.-C., Hasegawa Y., Hernandez-Rebollar J.L., Huang Y.-D.,
Jiang H., Jinchi H., Kimura K., Kubo D., Li C.-T., Lin L.C.-C., Liu C.-T.,
Liu K.-Y., Lu L.-M., Martin-Cocher P., Meyer-Zhao Z., Montana A.,
Moraghan A., Emir Moreno-Nolasco M., Nishioka H., Norton T.J., Nystrom G.,
Ogawa H., Oshiro P., Pradel N., Principe G., Raffin P.,
Rodriguez-Montoya I., Shaw P., Snow W., Kumara Sridharan T., Srinivasan R.,
Wei T.-S., Yu C.-Y.
<Astron. Astrophys. 681, A79 (2024)>
=2024A&A...681A..79E 2024A&A...681A..79E (SIMBAD/NED BibCode)
ADC_Keywords: Active gal. nuclei ; VLBI ; Millimetric/submm sources
Keywords: accretion, accretion disks - black hole physics - gravitation -
galaxies: active - galaxies: individual: M 87 - galaxies: jets
Abstract:
In April 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration
reported the first-ever event-horizon-scale images of a black hole,
resolving the central compact radio source in the giant elliptical
galaxy M 87. These images reveal a ring with a southerly brightness
distribution and a diameter of ∼42µas, consistent with the
predicted size and shape of a shadow produced by the gravitationally
lensed emission around a supermassive black hole. These results were
obtained as part of the April 2017 EHT observation campaign, using a
global very long baseline interferometric radio array operating at a
wavelength of 1.3mm. Here, we present results based on the second EHT
observing campaign, taking place in April 2018 with an improved array,
wider frequency coverage, and increased bandwidth. In particular, the
additional baselines provided by the Greenland telescope improved the
coverage of the array. Multiyear EHT observations provide independent
snapshots of the horizon-scale emission, allowing us to confirm the
persistence, size, and shape of the black hole shadow, and constrain
the intrinsic structural variability of the accretion flow. We have
confirmed the presence of an asymmetric ring structure, brighter in
the southwest, with a median diameter of 43.3-3.1+1.5µas. The
diameter of the 2018 ring is remarkably consistent with the diameter
obtained from the previous 2017 observations. On the other hand, the
position angle of the brightness asymmetry in 2018 is shifted by about
30° relative to 2017. The perennial persistence of the ring and
its diameter robustly support the interpretation that the ring is
formed by lensed emission surrounding a Kerr black hole with a mass
∼6.5x109M☉. The significant change in the ring brightness
asymmetry implies a spin axis that is more consistent with the
position angle of the large-scale jet.
Description:
FITS files of the representative image of M 87* from the EHT
observations taken on 2018 April 21 at band 3, as found in Figure 1 of
the paper. The image is created by averaging together the blurred
images from each of the methods described in Sect. 5 of the paper.
Objects:
-----------------------------------------
RA (2000) DE Designation(s)
-----------------------------------------
12 30 49.42 +12 23 28.0 M 87 = Virgo A
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File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
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ReadMe 80 . This file
list.dat 162 1 Information on fits imag
fits/* . 1 fits image
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See also:
J/ApJ/807/150 : 230GHz VLBI observations of M87 (Akiyama+, 2015)
J/A+A/616/A188 : M87 jet VLBI images (Kim+, 2018)
J/A+A/673/A159 : Spectral analysis of M87 jet (Ro+, 2023)
Byte-by-byte Description of file: list.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 9 F9.5 deg RAdeg Right Ascension of center (J2000)
10- 18 F9.5 deg DEdeg Declination of center (J2000)
20- 22 I3 --- Nx Number of pixels along X-axis
24- 26 I3 --- Ny Number of pixels along Y-axis
28- 37 A10 "datime" Obs.date Observation date
39- 43 F5.1 GHz Freq Observed frequency
45- 47 I3 Kibyte size Size of FITS file
49- 73 A25 --- FileName Name of FITS file, in subdirectory fits
75-162 A88 --- Title Title of the FITS file
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Acknowledgements:
Shiro Ikeda, shiro(at)ism.ac.jp
(End) Patricia Vannier [CDS] 10-Jan-2024