Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Doeleman, Sheperd S
• Tilanus, Remo P. J
• Cappallo, Roger J
• Titus, Michael
• Young, Ken H
• Chamberlin, Richard
• Woody, David
• Marrone, Daniel P
• Davis, Gary R
• Moran, James M
• Lamb, James
• Roy, Alan
• Plambeck, Richard
• Werthimer, Daniel
• Freund, Robert
• Bower, Geoffrey C
• Whitney, Alan R
• Bock, Douglas C.-J
• Krichbaum, Thomas P
• Friberg, Per
• Ziurys, Lucy M
• Corey, Brian
• Weintroub, Jonathan
• Smythe, Daniel L
• Rogers, Alan E. E
• Strittmatter, Peter
• Maness, Holly
• Niell, Arthur E

Titel

Event-horizon-scale structure in the supermassive black hole candidate at the Galactic Centre

Ist Teil von

• Nature, 2008-09, Vol.455 (7209), p.78-80

Ort / Verlag

London: Nature Publishing

Erscheinungsjahr

2008

Quelle

Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The cores of most galaxies are thought to harbour supermassive black holes, which power galactic nuclei by converting the gravitational energy of accreting matter into radiation. Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the compact source of radio, infrared and X-ray emission at the centre of the Milky Way, is the closest example of this phenomenon, with an estimated black hole mass that is 4,000,000 times that of the Sun. A long-standing astronomical goal is to resolve structures in the innermost accretion flow surrounding Sgr A*, where strong gravitational fields will distort the appearance of radiation emitted near the black hole. Radio observations at wavelengths of 3.5 mm and 7 mm have detected intrinsic structure in Sgr A*, but the spatial resolution of observations at these wavelengths is limited by interstellar scattering. Here we report observations at a wavelength of 1.3 mm that set a size of microarcseconds on the intrinsic diameter of Sgr A*. This is less than the expected apparent size of the event horizon of the presumed black hole, suggesting that the bulk of Sgr A* emission may not be centred on the black hole, but arises in the surrounding accretion flow.