March 21, 2020

Illustration of photon subrings around a black hole

An article published in the journal “Science Advances” reports a study on the possibility of obtaining sharp images of the subrings that form the photon ring around a black hole. A team of researchers led by Michael Johnson of of the Center for Astrophysics – Harvard and Smithsonian (CfA) worked on the feat announced almost a year ago with the publication of the photo of the area around the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87. The researchers think that adding a space telescope to the ones used by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration would allow to obtain the sharpness needed to distinguish one of the subrings, whose characteristics would allow to obtain more precise measurements of the mass of the black hole and more.