April 2023

M87 with its supermassive black hole and the jet it produces (Image R.-S. Lu (SHAO), E. Ros (MPIfR), S. Dagnello (NRAO/AUI/NSF))

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An article published in the journal “Nature” reports the results of the first observations ever obtained of the ring structure showing matter falling into the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87. A team of researchers used the ALMA and GLT radio telescopes and some of the ones part of the GMVA array to obtain the images they were looking for. These images show not only the area around the black hole but also the flows of materials that originate a relativistic jet. The collected data is useful to understand the mechanisms that lead those jets to reach the energies necessary to be accelerated to speeds approaching the speed of light.

The surface of the Moon and the Earth in the background as seen by the Hakuto-R lander shortly before the attempted Moonlanding (Image courtesy ispace)

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It was night in Tokyo when the Hakuto-R lander of the Japanese company ispace inc. attempted the Moon landing. Shortly before the touchdown, the team at the mission control center lost contact with Hakuto-R, and the last phase of the maneuver was followed only through a simulation based on the braking programming. After more than half an hour of trying to reconnect with the lander, company founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada had to admit that he had to assume that the Moon landing could not be completed.

The galaxy cluster Abell 2744 and its surrounding area, including the views distorted by gravitational lensing of galaxies behind it. Among them are the seven galaxies identified in the A2744-z7p9OD protocluster, also seen in the insets.

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An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” reports the evidence for the discovery of the oldest galaxy protocluster known so far. A team of researchers led by Takahiro Morishita of Caltech identified the cluster in its formation phase which was cataloged as A2744-z7p9OD with the Hubble Space Telescope and then confirmed with the James Webb Space Telescope the presence of at least seven galaxies. They were forming a larger structure about 650 million years after the Big Bang and according to calculations, the cluster has grown over time to include many other galaxies.

Super Heavy Booster 7 blasting off with Starship 24 atop (Image courtesy SpaceX)

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SpaceX conducted the flight test of its prototype Super Heavy rocket and Starship, launched from Boca Chica, Texas. This is the first test that saw the whole system of Elon Musk’s company which should revolutionize space travel with an unprecedented transport capacity and being totally reusable. In this case, however, these are prototypes with the Super Heavy identified as Booster 7 and Starship identified as Starship 24 or Ship24 or simply S24 which don’t have the safety requirements needed to conduct controlled landings. The test ended after almost 4 minutes with the explosion of both vehicles.

The image showing the area around the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87 in the version published in 2019 and in the one reprocessed with the PRIMO system

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An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” reports the results of using a machine learning system to obtain a sharper and more detailed version of the image showing the area around the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87. Lia Medeiros (Institute for Advanced Study), Dimitrios Psaltis (Georgia Tech), Tod Lauer (NOIRLab), and Feryal Özel (Georgia Tech), all members of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration that obtained the image that has become famous, developed the PRIMO system to reprocess the data collected during the original observation campaign in 2017. Their aim is to obtain the maximum possible resolution with all the details present in the data collected by the various radio telescopes participating in the EHT Collaboration. The image, to which the four researchers hold the rights, shows the comparison between the famous result published in 2019 and that of the first test with PRIMO.