February 23, 2022
Astronomers have found that underlying structure of the supermassive black hole at the center of Milky Way, named Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), is almost circular from the very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations at 1.3 cm and 7 mm wavelengths. Its size may indicate the accretion flow around the Sgr A* contains the nonthermal electrons, and the shape tells us the accretion flow’s rotation axis (or a possible radio jet) may be almost pointing at the Earth. This study is published in the Astrophysical Journal, led by Ilje Cho who is a researcher at IAA-CSIC, and co-authored, among others, by Juan Carlos Algaba, senior lecturer in the radio cosmology group of the department of physics, Universiti Malaya.
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Sgr A* is the best target to investigate what happens around a black hole, since it is the closest supermassive black hole from the Earth. In 2020, the Nobel Prize in Physics has also awarded to the studies of Sgr A*. To resolve the fine structure of Sgr A*, astronomers have used the VLBI technique which consists of many radio telescopes at different geographic locations so that it makes a virtual telescope the size of the distance between telescopes. Toward Sgr A*, however, there is another challenge which is the light scattering by the gas clouds in our Galaxy. To overcome this, Ilje Cho and international colleagues applied the scattering model from recent studies based on the historical observations to their observations with the East Asian VLBI Network (EAVN). As a result, the team has found that the intrinsic structure of Sgr A* is almost circular at 1.3 cm and 7 mm wavelengths. “Before correcting the effect of interstellar scattering medium, the structure of Sgr A* is more elongated towards the East-West direction. Through our study, we show that the elongation is mostly coming from the scattering effect”, explains CHO who has confirmed it with three different methods independently. “The EAVN enabled us to make it all”.
The EAVN consists of 21 radio telescopes: 4 in Korea, 11 in Japan, and 6 in China. For this study, 10 and 8 of them have been used to observe at 1.3 cm and 7 mm wavelengths, respectively. The observations were conducted in 2017 April, as a part of the large program of the Active Galactic Nuclei Science Working Group under the EAVN consortium. In addition, they are a part of the multi-wavelength campaign of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) which has unveiled the image of black hole shadow for the first time ever from the M87*.
("Malaysian participation in EAVN observations and involvement with the EAVN consortium is part of a long term project with the vision of including the country as a VLBI node for the network and training a new generation of Malaysian VLBI astronomers, and is currently supported by an FRGS grant", says ALGABA.)
(SOHN & JUNG, researchers at the Korean Astronomical and Space Science Institute (KASI), say, “The joint array of Korean VLBI Network (KVN) and the VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry (VERA), called the KVN and VERA Array (KaVA), is the precursor of the EAVN, which has been operated by the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) since 2010.”)
(SHEN, director of the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO), says “The participation of the Tianma-65m telescope through the EAVN has dramatically improved the sensitivity of the observations so that the faint signal could be better detected.”)
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Compared with the theoretical simulation of an accretion flow, the circular shape of Sgr A* may imply that the rotation axis of the accretion flow is almost pointing at us. In addition, the size of Sgr A* implies that the accretion flow around the supermassive black hole has to contain the nonthermal electrons.
(As KINO and KAWASHIMA, researchers at the Kogakuin University of Technology & Engineering, and the University of Tokyo, respectively indicate, “If we consider only thermal electrons, the predicted size is much smaller than the observed value. We found that this size-mismatch problem can be solved by including nonthermal electron components”.)
Together with the result at 3 mm by Sara Issaoun and the colleagues, the relation of the Sgr A*’s size & brightness and observing wavelength have been found. This is the first analysis with the VLBI data within a 2 days timescale. Assuming the same relation at shorter wavelengths, the size & brightness of the Sgr A* at 1.3 mm wavelength (230 GHz frequency) is predicted.
(ZHAO from IAA-CSIC in Spain, who is one of the coordinators of the EHT scattering working group), says, “This could be of great help to the EHT 2017 data analysis aiming to make the first image of the black hole shadow of Sgr A*.”)
There is a long-standing debate on the dominant radio emission scenario for Sgr A*, whether an accretion flow or a jet. This study has improved the accretion flow model prediction, but the jet scenario is still available to explain the results. To constrain the possible scenarios, future studies will be of great importance such as the long-term monitoring observations with multiple wavelength receivers of EAVN. This will provide the finer structure of Sgr A* and accurate position of the radio emission region at different wavelengths so that the possibility of each emission model can be further narrowed down.
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