Special Session SS13  29 June 2022

Imaging supermassive black holes, and their associated jets, with the Event Horizon Telescope

News: The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration hosts the first official special session in the annual EAS meetings during EAS 2022. The EHT collaboration released the first images of a black hole three years ago. Since then, the EHT has provided many cutting-edge results for nearby supermassive black holes. This day-long special session will exhibit a rich overview of the latest EHT results from all aspects, including its first results of the Galactic supermassive black hole, Sgr A*.

Aims and scope

On April 10, 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration released the first images of a black hole. The images show a bright ring of lensed photons enclosing a dark shadow, cast by the 6.5 billion solar mass supermassive black hole at the center of M87. The first horizon-scale images of a black hole have already provided unprecedented tests of Einstein's general relativity and alternative gravitational theories.

More recently in 2021, the EHT collaboration revealed the first images of polarized light from M87, imprinting the magnetism at the edge of the black hole horizon. Simultaneous with these remarkable EHT horizon-scale images, nineteen observatories spanning wavelengths from radio to TeV gamma-rays have provided a rich multiwavelength view of M87 and its spectacular jet, probing tremendous spatial scales spanning from the event horizon to millions of Schwarzschild radii.

SgrA*, the supermassive black hole lurking in the center of the Milky Way, is the other EHT?s prime horizon-scale target. SgrA* is an ideal laboratory to further test the theory of gravity and black hole accretion, given extremely accurate measurements of the black hole mass and distance -- measurements that earned astrophysicists Andrea M. Ghez and Reinhard Genzel the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics.

In addition to M87, the EHT collaboration has resolved the jet base of the famous nearby galaxy Centaurus A, a candidate horizon-scale target for next generation EHT arrays. The highest-angular-resolution view of the jet base demonstrated the critical role of the EHT to understand the accretion and jet system in nearby supermassive black holes.

This is an extraordinary time for black hole imaging and we hope that the 2022 EAS meeting in Valencia will offer us an opportunity to showcase this series of new supermassive black hole results and to help us engage a broad range of European and worldwide astronomers to build a platform for future discovery.

This Special Session has been partially funding by Program PROMETEO/2020/080 of the Generalitat Valenciana

Programme

With three sub-sessions across three 1.5 hours blocks, we will overview various science results from the EHT collaboration. In addition to various invited speakers from the EHT collaboration, we solicit poster contributions.

Sub Session 1: The supermassive black hole in M87
Introducing key new EHT results on the supermassive black hole in M87, including:

  • Polarization in M87* at horizon scales.
  • Magnetic field structure near the event horizon of M87
  • Multi-wavelength views of M87 from radio to very high energy emission
  • Multi-year evolution of horizon-scale emission of M87
  • Tests of general relativity and alternative gravity theory with the EHT M87 results

Sub Session 2: New views of extragalactic supermassive black holes with the EHT
This block will focus on the latest results from the EHT in the study of blazars and their associated jets, in particular:
  • EHT images of the supermassive binary black hole candidate OJ287
  • New highest angular resolution view of the jet base in Centaurus A
  • The sharpest view of the blazars NRAO530, J1924-2914, and NGC1052 with the EHT
  • Zooming into the core of the 3C279 blazar jet with the EHT at 20 uas angular resolution

Sub Session 3: First EHT results of the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Center SgrA*
Presenting the first views and analysis of the Galactic Center supermassive black hole with the EHT, including:
  • SgrA* imaging results with novel algorithms to synthesize images from EHT data
  • Multi-wavelength views of SgrA* simultaneously obtained with EHT observations
  • Time-domain properties of horizon-scale emission from SgrA*
  • Modeling results to estimate the black hole properties from EHT data
  • EHT constraints on the SgrA* accretion flow
  • Tests of general relativity with the first EHT SgrA* images
  • Invited speakers

    • Juan Carlos Algaba (University of Malaysia)
    • Lindy Blackburn (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian)
    • Michi Bauböck (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
    • Hope Boyce (McGill University)
    • Antonio Fuentes (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía)
    • Boris Georgiev (Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics)
    • Roman Gold (Southern Denmark University)
    • Michael Janssen (Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy)
    • Alejandra Jiménez Rosales (Radboud University)
    • Svetlana Jorstad (Boston University)
    • Prashant Kocherlakota (Goethe University Frankfurt)
    • Jae-Young Kim (Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute)
    • Ivan Marti-Vidal (University of Valencia)
    • Lia Medeiros (Institue of Advanced Study)
    • Thalia Traianou (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía)
    • Maciek Wielgus (Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy)

    Scientific organisers

    Kazu Akiyama (MIT Haystack), Ilse van Bemmel (JIVE), Geoffrey Bower (Chair; ASIAA), Raquel Fraga-Encinas (Radboud U.), José L. Gómez (IAA), Daryl Haggard (McGill U.), Jae-Young Kim (KASI), Iván Martí-Vidal (U. Valencia), Hung-Yi Pu (NTNU)

    Contact

    EHT Collaboration Speakers Bureau: eht-sb @ googlegroups.com

    Updated on Mon Oct 16 13:41:03 CEST 2023