Our black hole’s magnetic field revealed
The strong, organised magnetic fields spiralling into the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way have been newly revealed in a new image from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT).
The EHT is a network of radio telescopes across the world working together as an Earth-sized observatory. The first image of our Galaxy’s black hole, Sgr A*, was released in 2022, but this latest image shows the black hole in polarised light for the first time.
“What we’re seeing now is that there are strong, twisted and organised magnetic fields near the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way,” says Sara Issaoun from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory who co-led the project. “Along with Sgr A* having a strikingly similar polarisation structure to that seen in the much larger and more powerful M87* black hole, we’ve learned that strong and ordered magnetic fields are critical to how black holes interact with the gas and matter around them.”
Previous studies of M87’s black hole found the magnetic field was responsible for launching a powerful jet of material into the surrounding environment. It could be that Sgr A* is home to a similar jet, currently hidden from view. www.cfa.harvard.edu