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View of M87 supermassive black hole in polarized light
This image shows the polarized view of the black hole in M87. The lines mark the orientation of polarization, which is related to the magnetic field around the shadow of the black hole.
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, who produced the first ever image of a black hole released in 2019, released on April 10, 2019, a new view of the massive object at the center of the Messier 87 (M87) galaxy: how it looks in polarized light. This is the first time astronomers have been able to measure polarization, a signature of magnetic fields, this close to the edge of a black hole.
[Research funded by U.S. National Science Foundation grant AST 1440254.]
Learn more in the NSF Research News story Scientists image magnetic fields at edge of M87's black hole. (Date of Image: 2021; added to Multimedia Gallery: 4/13/2021)
Credit: EHT Collaboration (Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International)
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