Astronomers have made a groundbreaking discovery by capturing the shadow of a black hole and the powerful jet expelled from it in the same image. The image was taken in 2018 using telescopes from the Global Millimetre VLBI Array (GMVA), the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), and the Greenland Telescope (GLT). The image provides new insights into how black holes can launch energetic jets. The image shows how the base of a jet connects with the matter swirling around a supermassive black hole. The target of the image was galaxy M87, located 55 million light-years away and home to a black hole 6.5 billion times more massive than the Sun. The GMVA, ALMA, and GLT formed a network of radio-telescopes around the globe working together as a virtual Earth-sized telescope. Future observations with this network of telescopes will continue to unravel how supermassive black holes can launch powerful jets.
