Event Horizon Telescope collaboration has recently resolved the jet base of an evolving jet of plasma at ultra-high angular resolution. The international team of scientists used the Earth-size telescope to probe the magnetic structure in the nucleus of the radio galaxy 3C 84 (Perseus A), one of the closest active supermassive black holes in our cosmic neighbourhood. These novel results provide new insight into how jets are launched, revealing that in this cosmic tug of war, the magnetic fields overpower gravity.
See the original paper Ordered magnetic fields around the 3C 84 central black hole (A&A, G.F. Paraschos et al.: February 01, 2024, DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202348308) and read here the press release of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy.
Image: © Georgios Filippos Paraschos (MPIfR); A detailed observation of the radio galaxy 3C 84 requires zooming in as much as possible. This is achieved by decreasing the observation wavelength (from left to right) and using a world-wide network of telescopes. The obtained radio images show the black hole jet at different spatial scales (denoted by the horizontal bar below each image), with the EHT image on the right exhibiting the most details.