A group of astronomers as part of the Event Horizon Telescope project has shown a new image of the Sagittarius A* black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, Space.com reports.
Observations made with the Event Horizon Telescope have shown that the neatly ordered magnetic fields are similar to those at the center of the M87 galaxy surrounding the supermassive black hole M87*, which has a mass equivalent to about 6.5 billion Suns.
However, this is surprising given that Sagittarius A* has a mass of about “only” 4.3 million times that of the Sun.
Read also: Astronomers discovered ultra-fast gusts of black hole wind in the galaxy Markarian 817
Thus, new data from astronomers suggests that strong and well-organized magnetic fields may be present around all black holes.
“This new image of the black hole Sagittarius A* at the center of our Milky Way tells us that there are strong and ordered magnetic fields near the black hole. For a long time, we believed that magnetic fields played a key role in how black holes feed and eject matter in powerful jets. This new image shows that strong and ordered magnetic fields are critical to how black holes interact with the gas and matter around them,” said study co-leader Sarah Issaun of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
In 2017, the Event Horizon Telescope captured the first image of the black hole M87* and its surroundings, it said. It is located at a distance of approximately 53.5 million light years from Earth.
As Ukrinform reported, an international group of astronomers discovered a quasar with a black hole inside, which is growing so fast that it absorbs the equivalent of one Sun per day.
