Madrid. An independent reanalysis of observational data from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) for the center of the elliptical galaxy M87 produced images with different characteristics.
Radio observation data from the center of the elliptical galaxy M87 obtained by the Event Horizon Telescope in April 2017 – published in 2019 – and the methods by which they analyzed the information have been made publicly available around the world.
Researchers not involved in the EHT independently reanalyzed these data and methods, thus validating the results presented by the telescope. In fact, several teams have published their detailed results of the work in various investigations.
A team, made up of Makoto Miyoshi, an assistant professor at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan; Yoshiaki Kato, a research fellow at Riken at the time of the study, and Junichiro Makino, a professor at Kobe University, reanalyzed the M87 data with standard tools and probed the nature of the information, according to results published in The Astrophysical Journal.
Instead of the ring structure observed by the EHT, the resulting images show a “core” at the galactic center, in addition to the astrophysical jet extending from the core and the “knots” that appear to be part of the jet.
Many supermassive black holes emit astrophysical jets; the one extending from the center of M87 has been known for more than 100 years, and has been studied numerous times. The team believes it is the basis of this jet that their analysis has resolved.
He notes that the 40-microarcsecond (1/25,000th of an arcsecond) ring structure seen in the EHT image may be the result of insufficient data to resolve 40-microarcsecond structures, compared with the data for structures of other sizes, due to the smaller number of telescopes involved in the EHT observations at that time.
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