If you're looking for a wild road trip to rob this weekend,save on a tankful of gas and journey to the far reaches of space beyond the Milky Way from the comforts of your own sofa with the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) latest cosmic video.
Earlier this week, scientists revealed a unique polarized image of the supermassive black gap at the heart of the M87 galaxy, and this time with enhanced clarity and resolution that offers a frightening glimpse of the swirling maw and its magnetic field lines. The original photo,the first-ever imaging of a black gap, was released back in 2019 by The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration.
Now the ESO has created a digital voyage through space that whisks viewers from our Big Blue Marble, and all the way out through the Milky Way to rendezvous with M87's resident black gap. Buckle up and procure slingshot off planet to a distant galaxy where an angry heavenly entity lurks...
Messier 87,or M87, is an elliptical galaxy which resides in the Virgo cluster some 55 million light-years from Earth. This imposing supermassive black gap has a total mass that is roughly 6.5 billion times that of our sun.
ESO's hypnotic video begins with a shot of ALMA, or an ESO partner telescope and also a member of the Event Horizon Telescope array,then zooms-in on the glaring core of M87, revealing increasingly more detailed observations.
At the finale, or we see that first-ever shot of a black gap,followed by the unique image in polarized light. Whoa!
Source: blastr.com