Abstract
The nearby radio galaxy M87 is a prime target for studying black hole accretion and jet formation1,2. Event Horizon Telescope observations of M87 in 2017, at a wavelength of 1.3 mm, revealed a ring-like structure, which was interpreted as gravitationally lensed emission around a central black hole3. Here we report images of M87 obtained in 2018, at a wavelength of 3.5 mm, showing that the compact radio core is spatially resolved. High-resolution imaging shows a ring-like structure of 8.4−1.1+0.5 Schwarzschild radii in diameter, approximately 50% larger than that seen at 1.3 mm. The outer edge at 3.5 mm is also larger than that at 1.3 mm. This larger and thicker ring indicates a substantial contribution from the accretion flow with absorption effects, in addition to the gravitationally lensed ring-like emission. The images show that the edge-brightened jet connects to the accretion flow of the black hole. Close to the black hole, the emission profile of the jet-launching region is wider than the expected profile of a black-hole-driven jet, suggesting the possible presence of a wind associated with the accretion flow.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 686-690 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| Journal | Nature |
| Volume | 616 |
| Issue number | 7958 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2023 Apr 27 |
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In: Nature, Vol. 616, No. 7958, 27.04.2023, p. 686-690.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - A ring-like accretion structure in M87 connecting its black hole and jet
AU - Lu, Ru Sen
AU - Asada, Keiichi
AU - Krichbaum, Thomas P.
AU - Park, Jongho
AU - Tazaki, Fumie
AU - Pu, Hung Yi
AU - Nakamura, Masanori
AU - Lobanov, Andrei
AU - Hada, Kazuhiro
AU - Akiyama, Kazunori
AU - Kim, Jae Young
AU - Marti-Vidal, Ivan
AU - Gómez, José L.
AU - Kawashima, Tomohisa
AU - Yuan, Feng
AU - Ros, Eduardo
AU - Alef, Walter
AU - Britzen, Silke
AU - Bremer, Michael
AU - Broderick, Avery E.
AU - Doi, Akihiro
AU - Giovannini, Gabriele
AU - Giroletti, Marcello
AU - Ho, Paul T.P.
AU - Honma, Mareki
AU - Hughes, David H.
AU - Inoue, Makoto
AU - Jiang, Wu
AU - Kino, Motoki
AU - Koyama, Shoko
AU - Lindqvist, Michael
AU - Liu, Jun
AU - Marscher, Alan P.
AU - Matsushita, Satoki
AU - Nagai, Hiroshi
AU - Rottmann, Helge
AU - Savolainen, Tuomas
AU - Schuster, Karl Friedrich
AU - Shen, Zhi Qiang
AU - de Vicente, Pablo
AU - Walker, R. Craig
AU - Yang, Hai
AU - Zensus, J. Anton
AU - Algaba, Juan Carlos
AU - Allardi, Alexander
AU - Bach, Uwe
AU - Berthold, Ryan
AU - Bintley, Dan
AU - Byun, Do Young
AU - Casadio, Carolina
AU - Chang, Shu Hao
AU - Chang, Chih Cheng
AU - Chang, Song Chu
AU - Chen, Chung Chen
AU - Chen, Ming Tang
AU - Chilson, Ryan
AU - Chuter, Tim C.
AU - Conway, John
AU - Crew, Geoffrey B.
AU - Dempsey, Jessica T.
AU - Dornbusch, Sven
AU - Faber, Aaron
AU - Friberg, Per
AU - García, Javier González
AU - Garrido, Miguel Gómez
AU - Han, Chih Chiang
AU - Han, Kuo Chang
AU - Hasegawa, Yutaka
AU - Herrero-Illana, Ruben
AU - Huang, Yau De
AU - Huang, Chih Wei L.
AU - Impellizzeri, Violette
AU - Jiang, Homin
AU - Jinchi, Hao
AU - Jung, Taehyun
AU - Kallunki, Juha
AU - Kirves, Petri
AU - Kimura, Kimihiro
AU - Koay, Jun Yi
AU - Koch, Patrick M.
AU - Kramer, Carsten
AU - Kraus, Alex
AU - Kubo, Derek
AU - Kuo, Cheng Yu
AU - Li, Chao Te
AU - Lin, Lupin Chun Che
AU - Liu, Ching Tang
AU - Liu, Kuan Yu
AU - Lo, Wen Ping
AU - Lu, Li Ming
AU - MacDonald, Nicholas
AU - Martin-Cocher, Pierre
AU - Messias, Hugo
AU - Meyer-Zhao, Zheng
AU - Minter, Anthony
AU - Nair, Dhanya G.
AU - Nishioka, Hiroaki
AU - Norton, Timothy J.
AU - Nystrom, George
AU - Ogawa, Hideo
AU - Oshiro, Peter
AU - Patel, Nimesh A.
AU - Pen, Ue Li
AU - Pidopryhora, Yurii
AU - Pradel, Nicolas
AU - Raffin, Philippe A.
AU - Rao, Ramprasad
AU - Ruiz, Ignacio
AU - Sanchez, Salvador
AU - Shaw, Paul
AU - Snow, William
AU - Sridharan, T. K.
AU - Srinivasan, Ranjani
AU - Tercero, Belén
AU - Torne, Pablo
AU - Traianou, Efthalia
AU - Wagner, Jan
AU - Walther, Craig
AU - Wei, Ta Shun
AU - Yang, Jun
AU - Yu, Chen Yu
N1 - Funding Information: R.-S.L. is supported by the Key Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 11933007); the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, CAS (grant no. ZDBS-LY-SLH011); the Shanghai Pilot Program for Basic Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai Branch (JCYJ-SHFY-2022-013) and the Max Planck Partner Group of the MPG and the CAS. R.-S.L. thanks L. Blackburn, L. Chen, Y.-Z. Cui, L. Huang, R. S. de Souza and Y. Mizuno for discussions on data calibration and interpretation. J.P. acknowledges financial support through the EACOA Fellowship awarded by the East Asia Core Observatories Association, which consists of the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Center for Astronomical Mega-Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute. H.-Y.P. acknowledges the support of the Ministry of Education Yushan Young Scholar Program, the Ministry of Science and Technology under grant no. 110-2112-M-003-007-MY2 and the Physics Division, National Center for Theoretical Sciences. K.H. is supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant nos. JP18H03721, JP19H01943, JP18KK0090, JP2101137, JP2104488 and JP22H00157. J.-Y. Kim acknowledges support from the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea (grant no. 2022R1C1C1005255). I.M.-V. acknowledges support from research project PID2019-108995GB-C22 of Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (Spain), from the GenT Project CIDEGENT/2018/021 of Generalitat Valenciana (Spain), and from the Project European Union NextGenerationEU (PRTR-C17I1). F.Y. and H.Y. are supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 12133008, 12192220 and 12192223) and China Manned Space Project (CMS-CSST-2021-B02). A.E.B. thanks the Delaney Family for their financial support through the Delaney Family John A. Wheeler Chair at Perimeter Institute. This work was supported in part by Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Research at Perimeter Institute is supported by the Government of Canada through the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada and by the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade. A.E.B. received further financial support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada through a Discovery Grant. S.K. acknowledges the Female Researchers Flowering Plan from MEXT of Japan, which supports research activities of female researchers. The research at Boston University was supported in part by NASA Fermi Guest Investigator grant no. 80NSSC20K1567. H. Nagai is supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant nos. JP18K03709 and JP21H01137. T.S. was partly supported by the Academy of Finland projects 274477, 284495, 312496 and 315721. P.d.V. and B.T. thank the support from the European Research Council through Synergy Grant ERC-2013-SyG, G.A. 610256 (NANOCOSMOS), and from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICIU) through project PID2019-107115GB-C21. B.T. also thanks the Spanish MICIU for funding support from grant nos. PID2019-106235GB-I00 and PID2019-105203GB-C21. This publication acknowledges project M2FINDERS, which is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 101018682). C.C. acknowledges support by the ERC under the Horizon ERC Grants 2021 programme under grant agreement no. 101040021. D.G.N. acknowledges funding from Conicyt through Fondecyt Postdoctorado (project code 3220195). This research has made use of data obtained using the Global Millimetre VLBI Array (GMVA), which consists of telescopes operated by the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR), IRAM, Onsala, Metsähovi Radio Observatory, Yebes, the Korean VLBI Network, the Greenland Telescope, the Green Bank Observatory (GBT) and the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). The VLBA and the GBT are facilities of the National Science Foundation (NSF) operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities. The data were correlated at the VLBI correlator of MPIfR in Bonn, Germany. This paper makes use of the following ALMA data: ADS/JAO.ALMA\#2017.1.00842.V. ALMA is a partnership of ESO (representing its member states), NSF (USA) and NINS (Japan), together with NRC (Canada), MOST and ASIAA (Taiwan) and KASI (Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by ESO, AUI/NRAO and NAOJ. The Greenland Telescope (GLT) is operated by the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO). The GLT is part of the ALMA–Taiwan project and is supported in part by the Academia Sinica (AS) and the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan; 103-2119-M-001-010-MY2, 105-2112-M-001-025-MY3, 105-2119-M-001-042, 106-2112-M-001-011, 106-2119-M-001-013, 106-2119-M-001-027, 106-2923-M-001-005, 107-2119-M-001-017, 107-2119-M-001-020, 107-2119-M-001-041, 107-2119-M-110-005, 107-2923-M-001-009, 108-2112-M-001-048, 108-2112-M-001-051, 108-2923-M-001-002, 109-2112-M-001-025, 109-2124-M-001-005, 109-2923-M-001-001, 110-2112-M-003-007-MY2, 110-2112-M-001-033, 110-2124-M-001-007, 110-2923-M-001-001, and 110-2811-M-006-012. This research is based in part on observations obtained with the 100-m telescope of the MPIfR at Effelsberg, observations carried out at the IRM 30-m telescope operated by IRAM, which is supported by INSU/CNRS (France), MPG (Germany) and IGN (Spain), observations obtained with the Yebes 40-m radio telescope at the Yebes Observatory, which is operated by the Spanish Geographic Institute (IGN, Ministerio de Transportes, Movilidad y Agenda Urbana), and observations supported by the Green Bank Observatory, which is a main facility funded by the NSF operated by the Associated Universities. We acknowledge support from the Onsala Space Observatory national infrastructure for providing facilities and observational support. The Onsala Space Observatory receives funding from the Swedish Research Council through grant no. 2017-00648. This publication makes use of data obtained at the Metsähovi Radio Observatory, operated by Aalto University. It also makes use of VLBA data from the VLBA-BU Blazar Monitoring Program (BEAM-ME and VLBA-BU-BLAZAR; http://www.bu.edu/blazars/BEAM-ME.html ), funded by NASA through the Fermi Guest Investigator Program. Funding Information: R.-S.L. is supported by the Key Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 11933007); the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, CAS (grant no. ZDBS-LY-SLH011); the Shanghai Pilot Program for Basic Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai Branch (JCYJ-SHFY-2022-013) and the Max Planck Partner Group of the MPG and the CAS. R.-S.L. thanks L. Blackburn, L. Chen, Y.-Z. Cui, L. Huang, R. S. de Souza and Y. Mizuno for discussions on data calibration and interpretation. J.P. acknowledges financial support through the EACOA Fellowship awarded by the East Asia Core Observatories Association, which consists of the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Center for Astronomical Mega-Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute. H.-Y.P. acknowledges the support of the Ministry of Education Yushan Young Scholar Program, the Ministry of Science and Technology under grant no. 110-2112-M-003-007-MY2 and the Physics Division, National Center for Theoretical Sciences. K.H. is supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant nos. JP18H03721, JP19H01943, JP18KK0090, JP2101137, JP2104488 and JP22H00157. J.-Y. Kim acknowledges support from the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea (grant no. 2022R1C1C1005255). I.M.-V. acknowledges support from research project PID2019-108995GB-C22 of Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (Spain), from the GenT Project CIDEGENT/2018/021 of Generalitat Valenciana (Spain), and from the Project European Union NextGenerationEU (PRTR-C17I1). F.Y. and H.Y. are supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 12133008, 12192220 and 12192223) and China Manned Space Project (CMS-CSST-2021-B02). A.E.B. thanks the Delaney Family for their financial support through the Delaney Family John A. Wheeler Chair at Perimeter Institute. This work was supported in part by Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Research at Perimeter Institute is supported by the Government of Canada through the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada and by the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade. A.E.B. received further financial support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada through a Discovery Grant. S.K. acknowledges the Female Researchers Flowering Plan from MEXT of Japan, which supports research activities of female researchers. The research at Boston University was supported in part by NASA Fermi Guest Investigator grant no. 80NSSC20K1567. H. Nagai is supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant nos. JP18K03709 and JP21H01137. T.S. was partly supported by the Academy of Finland projects 274477, 284495, 312496 and 315721. P.d.V. and B.T. thank the support from the European Research Council through Synergy Grant ERC-2013-SyG, G.A. 610256 (NANOCOSMOS), and from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICIU) through project PID2019-107115GB-C21. B.T. also thanks the Spanish MICIU for funding support from grant nos. PID2019-106235GB-I00 and PID2019-105203GB-C21. This publication acknowledges project M2FINDERS, which is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 101018682). C.C. acknowledges support by the ERC under the Horizon ERC Grants 2021 programme under grant agreement no. 101040021. D.G.N. acknowledges funding from Conicyt through Fondecyt Postdoctorado (project code 3220195). This research has made use of data obtained using the Global Millimetre VLBI Array (GMVA), which consists of telescopes operated by the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR), IRAM, Onsala, Metsähovi Radio Observatory, Yebes, the Korean VLBI Network, the Greenland Telescope, the Green Bank Observatory (GBT) and the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). The VLBA and the GBT are facilities of the National Science Foundation (NSF) operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities. The data were correlated at the VLBI correlator of MPIfR in Bonn, Germany. This paper makes use of the following ALMA data: ADS/JAO.ALMA\#2017.1.00842.V. ALMA is a partnership of ESO (representing its member states), NSF (USA) and NINS (Japan), together with NRC (Canada), MOST and ASIAA (Taiwan) and KASI (Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by ESO, AUI/NRAO and NAOJ. The Greenland Telescope (GLT) is operated by the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO). The GLT is part of the ALMA–Taiwan project and is supported in part by the Academia Sinica (AS) and the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan; 103-2119-M-001-010-MY2, 105-2112-M-001-025-MY3, 105-2119-M-001-042, 106-2112-M-001-011, 106-2119-M-001-013, 106-2119-M-001-027, 106-2923-M-001-005, 107-2119-M-001-017, 107-2119-M-001-020, 107-2119-M-001-041, 107-2119-M-110-005, 107-2923-M-001-009, 108-2112-M-001-048, 108-2112-M-001-051, 108-2923-M-001-002, 109-2112-M-001-025, 109-2124-M-001-005, 109-2923-M-001-001, 110-2112-M-003-007-MY2, 110-2112-M-001-033, 110-2124-M-001-007, 110-2923-M-001-001, and 110-2811-M-006-012. This research is based in part on observations obtained with the 100-m telescope of the MPIfR at Effelsberg, observations carried out at the IRM 30-m telescope operated by IRAM, which is supported by INSU/CNRS (France), MPG (Germany) and IGN (Spain), observations obtained with the Yebes 40-m radio telescope at the Yebes Observatory, which is operated by the Spanish Geographic Institute (IGN, Ministerio de Transportes, Movilidad y Agenda Urbana), and observations supported by the Green Bank Observatory, which is a main facility funded by the NSF operated by the Associated Universities. We acknowledge support from the Onsala Space Observatory national infrastructure for providing facilities and observational support. The Onsala Space Observatory receives funding from the Swedish Research Council through grant no. 2017-00648. This publication makes use of data obtained at the Metsähovi Radio Observatory, operated by Aalto University. It also makes use of VLBA data from the VLBA-BU Blazar Monitoring Program (BEAM-ME and VLBA-BU-BLAZAR; http://www.bu.edu/blazars/BEAM-ME.html ), funded by NASA through the Fermi Guest Investigator Program. Publisher Copyright: © 2023, The Author(s).
PY - 2023/4/27
Y1 - 2023/4/27
N2 - The nearby radio galaxy M87 is a prime target for studying black hole accretion and jet formation1,2. Event Horizon Telescope observations of M87 in 2017, at a wavelength of 1.3 mm, revealed a ring-like structure, which was interpreted as gravitationally lensed emission around a central black hole3. Here we report images of M87 obtained in 2018, at a wavelength of 3.5 mm, showing that the compact radio core is spatially resolved. High-resolution imaging shows a ring-like structure of 8.4−1.1+0.5 Schwarzschild radii in diameter, approximately 50% larger than that seen at 1.3 mm. The outer edge at 3.5 mm is also larger than that at 1.3 mm. This larger and thicker ring indicates a substantial contribution from the accretion flow with absorption effects, in addition to the gravitationally lensed ring-like emission. The images show that the edge-brightened jet connects to the accretion flow of the black hole. Close to the black hole, the emission profile of the jet-launching region is wider than the expected profile of a black-hole-driven jet, suggesting the possible presence of a wind associated with the accretion flow.
AB - The nearby radio galaxy M87 is a prime target for studying black hole accretion and jet formation1,2. Event Horizon Telescope observations of M87 in 2017, at a wavelength of 1.3 mm, revealed a ring-like structure, which was interpreted as gravitationally lensed emission around a central black hole3. Here we report images of M87 obtained in 2018, at a wavelength of 3.5 mm, showing that the compact radio core is spatially resolved. High-resolution imaging shows a ring-like structure of 8.4−1.1+0.5 Schwarzschild radii in diameter, approximately 50% larger than that seen at 1.3 mm. The outer edge at 3.5 mm is also larger than that at 1.3 mm. This larger and thicker ring indicates a substantial contribution from the accretion flow with absorption effects, in addition to the gravitationally lensed ring-like emission. The images show that the edge-brightened jet connects to the accretion flow of the black hole. Close to the black hole, the emission profile of the jet-launching region is wider than the expected profile of a black-hole-driven jet, suggesting the possible presence of a wind associated with the accretion flow.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85153905914&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85153905914&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41586-023-05843-w
DO - 10.1038/s41586-023-05843-w
M3 - Article
C2 - 37100940
AN - SCOPUS:85153905914
SN - 0028-0836
VL - 616
SP - 686
EP - 690
JO - Nature
JF - Nature
IS - 7958
ER -