This new image of Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) reveals strong and organized magnetic fields spiraling from its edge. The magnetic field structure is eerily similar to that of the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy, suggesting that strong magnetic fields may be common to all black holes.
Since Sgr A* moved around so much when astronomers were trying to take a picture, it was difficult to construct even the unpolarized image. Astronomers observed Sgr A* using eight linked telescopes from around the world, thus creating a virtual Earth-sized telescope, the EHT. This included the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the ESO-hosted Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), both in northern Chile.
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What we’re seeing now is that there are strong, twisted, and organized magnetic fields near the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Along with Sgr A* having a strikingly similar polarization structure to that seen in the much larger and more powerful M87* black hole, we’ve learned that strong and ordered magnetic fields are critical to how black holes interact with the gas and matter around them,” said Sara Issaoun, NASA Hubble Fellowship Program Einstein Fellow.
