M87* photon ring scaled one in 1.5*10^15
This is a representation of the intensity of the light emitted from around the central black hole of the galaxy M87 (named M87*). I made this using MATLAB R2020a and the images from Arras (2020), images derived from the famous images from the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (2019), the first "direct" images taken of a black hole ever. The original image is extremely blurred because of its short apparent diameter (angle of view). In order to get the scale, is about the same apparent size of watching a smartphone on the surface of the Moon, from Earth. This was posible using telescopes all around the globe as a giant interferometer. There are also distortion because of the gravitational lensing, and the material present there is constantly moving. I use the "day 0" of the mentioned paper, and I made correction for the gravitational lensing, simulating the path of light around the black hole. The shadow of the black hole was also compensated. I simulate the orbit of the material around for 4 days, just to give the model a "whirlpool" looking. I have to clarify that non feature shown in the model have a real correlation, the material there is orbiting in a thin flat disc around, and from 3 times the Schwarzschild radius beyond. The main brilliant ring is the photon ring, composed of photons orbiting at the speed of light, ionizing and spiralling inside the event horizon. I used Blender to smooth the borders of the disc. The part you see in the original image is the "south" side of disc. That's because of its spin direction and the right hand rule, the south direction of the rotational axis is pointing almost directly to us.
The file's names explained: name_1_x_10_y.stl is 1 : x * 10y. So _1_6_10_7 is 1:600000000 or one in 60 million.
The file's names explained: name_1_x_10_y.stl is 1 : x * 10y. So _1_6_10_7 is 1:600000000 or one in 60 million.
M87*
M87, or Messier object 87, is one of the biggest galaxies in the local universe, and so it is its central supermassive black. The galaxy is shaped symmetrically spherical, unlike our Milky Way, that has spiral arms instead. The very core of it has a SMBH, where emerge a jet of plasma at relativistic speed, that points near to our direction, 17° to the line of sight. The SMBH event horizon is so big that all the Solar System planets with their orbits fit inside; and it is the second largest event horizon in apparent diameter, that is, the size we see it from here. Te first event horizon in that rank is Sgr A*, Milky Way's core SMBH, because of its proximity to Earth, but Sgr A* is actually way smaller than M87*. The area represented in this model is comparable in size with our Solar System Heliosphere. A black hole whole mass is concentrated in its center, the singularity, but it's common to use the volume of the event horizon as the black hole's volume. The event horizon is not a solid surface, but a boundary from where light can no longer escape. In stellar mass black holes, the event horizon, like Cygnus X-1, have a radius, called "Schwarzschild radius", of a few tens to hundreds kilometers, comparable with a medium size asteroid, resulting in a density over billions times that of water. In contrast, super masive black holes can have a density similar or even lower than water. This is because the Schwarzschild radius is proportional to the mass, and thus, the volume grows by exponent 3 over the mass.- Type: Black hole.
- Distance to the Sun: 10.638x107 ly.
- Density: Infinite (singularity), 0.0004 g/cm3 (event horizon)
- Model scale: 1:1.5x1015 (20cm)
References
- Visible shapes of black holesM87* and SgrA. Dokuchaev. 2020
- The variable shadow of M87*. Arras. 2020
- First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. I. The Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole. The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration. 2019
- Surf to STL function for MATLAB
