The Universe - Astronomy and Astrophysics

Razor-sharp test images show Euclid’s instruments performing as expected

An early test image from Euclid’s visible light camera, VIS, displays the full field of view on the left, while a close-up view of one segment's four quadrants is shown on the right. The close-up view represents approximately one quarter of the width and height of the full Moon. Image: ESA

The Euclid space telescope from the European Space Agency, launched on 1 July via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, has arrived at its operational position at Lagrange Point 2, a stable gravitational area 1.5 million kilometers (1 million miles) away from Earth.

Initial test images reveal that the spacecraft's VISual imager (VIS) and Near-infrared Imaging Spectrometer and Photometer (NISP) are functioning well, capturing clear, wide-angle views of numerous stars and galaxies. Though raw images display cosmic ray streaks, these artifacts will be eliminated during the processing of scientific images.

Giuseppe Racca, the project manager, expressed, “After over 11 years of Euclid's design and development, it is both thrilling and deeply emotional to witness these initial images. It's truly remarkable to see just a few galaxies here, captured with minimal system adjustments. Once fully calibrated, Euclid will survey billions of galaxies to construct the most extensive 3D map of the sky ever created.”

Euclid’s Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer (NISP) is crafted to gauge the light emission from galaxies across various IR wavelengths. The left image displays NISP's complete field of view, while the right image provides a closer view. Image: ESA

Yannick Mellier, the head of the multi-agency Euclid research consortium, stated, “The remarkable initial images captured by Euclid's visible and near-infrared instruments herald a new era in observational cosmology and statistical astronomy. They signify the commencement of the exploration into the true essence of dark energy, a pursuit led by the Euclid Consortium.”

The $1.5 billion Euclid project represents a pioneering effort to elucidate the characteristics of dark matter, the enigmatic substance permeating the universe, and dark energy, the inexplicable repulsive force propelling the universe's expansion.

Through the analysis of subtle luminosity variations in galaxies spanning the last 10 billion years, Euclid's cameras will aid researchers in determining whether dark energy aligns with a static "cosmological constant" as foreseen by Einstein's theory of general relativity, or if the current understanding of gravity necessitates revision.

Euclid will also delve into the nature of dark matter by scrutinizing the configurations of approximately 1.5 billion galaxies to ascertain how they have been distorted by concealed clouds of dark matter scattered across the expanse between Euclid and its targets.

ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher remarked, “It is truly impressive to witness the rapid success of the latest addition to ESA's scientific missions. I am fully confident that the mission's team will utilize Euclid effectively to unveil substantial insights about the 95 percent of the Universe that remains largely unknown to us.”

New comet predicted to brighten rapidly as it sprints Sunwards

Comet C/2023 P1 (Nishimura) imaged on 15 August from June Lake, California, USA, using a Celestron C14 HyperStar and a ZWO ASI2600MC pro camera to shoot and stack twenty 15-second exposures. Image: Dan Bartlett.

It’s time to hold onto your observing hats once more as a new comet, C/2023 P1 (Nishimura), discovered on 11 August, promises a significant brightening as it hurtles towards the Sun. However, in typical cometary fashion, its behavior is difficult to predict on its first and only visit to the Sun’s harsh environs. There’s a possibility it may disintegrate and fade away.

Currently, Comet C/2023 P1 (Nishimura) can be found in the pre-dawn sky moving northeastward among the stars of Gemini. Observing reports are limited in the initial week or so, but it is shining at approximately magnitude +9.5. Upon discovery, it was reported with a coma of 5 arcminutes in angular size and a tail eight arcminutes long. Nishimura will be closest to Earth, at a distance of around 127.1 million kilometers (0.85 AU), on 13 September, and will reach perihelion on 18 September, when it will be 32.9 million kilometers (0.22 AU) from the Sun.

Comet C/2023 P1 (Nishimura) lies low in the pre-dawn sky as it tracks through Gemini, Cancer and Leo on its way to perihelion on 18 September. All AN graphics by Greg Smye-Rumsby.

When to observe the comet

The comet remains visible in the pre-dawn sky until 13 September. A small telescope should easily spot it, provided your observing site has a good horizon to the east-southeast and is not heavily affected by light pollution. The Moon will not interfere until early September.

On 20 August at 4.25am, approximately 90 minutes before sunrise and at the start of nautical twilight from London (with the Sun 12° below the horizon), Comet C/2023 P1 (Nishimura) is positioned about 13° above, around 3° southeast of the magnitude +3.5 star Wasat (delta Geminorum). The comet should be more visible on the pre-dawn of 26 August, aligning nicely with Gemini’s bright stars Castor and Pollux, situated 6.7° below Pollux, the southern twin. It is now a bit higher in the sky, around 4° higher, with the Minor Planet Center anticipating a one-magnitude brightening.

By the end of August, Comet C/2023 P1 (Nishimura) is in Cancer, maintaining its altitude and positioned approximately 4° north-northwest of the Beehive cluster (Messier 44), the prominent open cluster. If it continues to brighten as predicted, the comet will shine at about magnitude +7.5.

Comet C/2023 P1 (Nishimura) lines up with Castor and Pollux in the pre-dawn sky of 26 August.

Into September: losing altitude but brightening faster

In early September, Comet C/2023 P1 (Nishimura) begins to descend in altitude as it approaches the Sun, but compensates with an accelerated rate of brightening. It should still be observable through binoculars at this point.

On the morning of 7 September, the comet can be seen in Leo, passing north of magnitude +3 epsilon Leonis while positioned around 13° high in London at 5.05am. A few mornings later, Comet C/2023 P1 (Nishimura) drops below 10° altitude as it starts moving southward, now traversing the sky more than four times faster than during its discovery.

Into the early evening sky

Following its closest approach to Earth on 13 September, Comet C/2023 P1 (Nishimura) transitions to the early-evening sky, with an elongation from the Sun ranging between 12 to 15 degrees. There's a slight opportunity to catch a glimpse of it in strong twilight approximately 40 minutes after sunset from the 13th to the 18th, positioned just about 6° high in the west-northwest. Some estimates place Comet C/2023 P1 (Nishimura) at magnitude +2.8 during this time; even if accurate, it will be challenging to observe.

If it survives its perihelion passage, Comet C/2023 P1 (Nishimura) continues its southward descent for the remainder of the year. Observers in the Southern Hemisphere can witness it under twilit conditions. From Sydney, Australia, the comet appears low in the pre-dawn northeastern sky until around 25 August. After that, it becomes unobservable until late October, when it is low in the pre-dawn sky amidst the stars of Hydra, not far from the globular cluster M68. However, at this point, it shines fainter than magnitude +10.

Focus on Messier 106

Sniff out the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici), the home of the magnificent Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) in the far northern sky, and you’ll find more galaxies than you can shake a stick at. Prominent Messier 106 (NGC 4258) is a superb spiral galaxy that holds its own in the company of the likes of the Sunflower Galaxy (M63) and M94. It’s bright enough to be found through a pair of binoculars and it looks like a galaxy through even a small telescope.

Where to look

Messier 106 is located in the north-western corner of Canes Venatici; sweep with a pair of 10 x 50 binoculars 1.7° south of the star 3 Canum Venaticorum (magnitude +5.2) and on a fine night you should spot a faint smudge of light. M106 is circumpolar (never setting) from UK shores, culminating late-month almost at the zenith at about midnight GMT.

An 80mm telescope (three-inch) can show its elongated disc, orientated south-east to north-west, while upgrading to a 150mm (six-inch) reveals a slightly mottled, oval-shaped core extending to perhaps 10’ x 7’, with a well-defined nucleus surrounded by a faint outer halo of nebulosity.

A big galaxy

Messier 106 is a large galaxy, comparable in size to the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), and bears some resemblance to it. With a physical diameter of 135,000 light years and located at a distance of 24 million light years, it presents a substantial apparent diameter in the sky of 18’ x 7.9’. M106 emits strong radio waves from its active core, earning it a Seyfert II classification.

Amateur astronomers now routinely capture stunning images of M106, and widefield data can reveal several smaller galaxies, such as NGC 4217, an appealing edge-on spiral with a prominent dust line visible through a 200mm (eight-inch) telescope. Additionally, located closer to M106, NGC 4248, a smaller irregular galaxy, can be observed through a 300mm (12-inch) telescope.

First colour images from Euclid space telescope get rave reviews

The first color images from the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope were revealed 7 November, providing sharp views of the Perseus galaxy cluster, two nearby galaxies, the Horsehead Nebula and a globular cluster.

“We have never seen astronomical images like this before, containing so much detail,” Euclid project scientist René Laureijs said in an ESA release accompanying the images.

“Images are even more beautiful and sharp than we could have hoped for, showing us many previously unseen features in well-known areas of the nearby Universe. Now we are ready to observe billions of galaxies, and study their evolution over cosmic time.”

The wide-angle view of the Perseus cluster, one of the largest structures in the known cosmos, is particularly striking, showing 1,000 or more member galaxies and another 100,000 or more in the distant background.

Euclid’s view of the Horsehead Nebula also was striking because it rivals the view from larger telescopes yet took just one hour to capture in a single frame.

While Euclid’s relatively small primary mirror is much less powerful than Hubble’s or the JWST's, the wider field of view, a 600-megapixel visible light camera and a 64-megapixel infrared spectrometer will allow it to discern the shape and evolution of galaxies over the past 10 billion years.

The $1.5 billion observatory is designed to probe the nature of dark energy, the mysterious force speeding up the expansion of the universe, and dark matter, the unseen material holding galaxies together and shaping their evolution.

By studying subtle changes in the light from selected galaxies, scientists hope to observe the transition from the Big Bang’s initial gravity-driven deceleration to the era of accelerated expansion under the emerging dominance of dark energy some five billion years ago. At the same time, they expect to map the influence of dark matter on galactic structure.

“Dark matter pulls galaxies together and causes them to spin more rapidly than visible matter alone can account for,” said ESA science director Carole Mundell. “Dark energy is driving the accelerated expansion of the Universe.

“Euclid will make a leap in our understanding of the cosmos as a whole, and these exquisite Euclid images show that the mission is ready to help answer one of the greatest mysteries of modern physics.”

It will take Euclid six years to complete a 3D map of the sky around the Milky Way, generating an estimated 100 gigabytes of data per day, or some 70,000 terabytes over the course of the mission.

The Great Square of Pegasus: Heralding Autumn

One sure sign that summer is almost over and longer autumnal nights are taking over from more balmy late-summer evenings is the grand appearance in September’s late-evening southern sky of the Great Square of Pegasus, the winged-horse’s familiar asterism (star pattern). The Square is well up in the eastern sky as astronomically dark skies fall at mid-month and its centre culminates at around 1am BST (midnight UT) at a very favourable altitude of 60 degrees.

The four stars marking the corners of the Square all shine at second- or third-magnitude, so it’s easy to see it even from light-polluted locations. Beginners often remark that the Square appears larger than expected; it spans roughly 15 degrees along each side and is about 20 degrees across diagonally.

Only three of the stars actually belong to Pegasus. The top-left (north-eastern) star of the Square is alpha (α) Andromedae (Alpheratz), the brightest star in the constellation Andromeda. At one time it had two designations, alpha Andromedae and delta (δ) Pegasi, but when the constellation boundaries were defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in 1922, Alpheratz was assigned to Andromeda and the name delta Pegasi fell into disuse (at least by professional astronomers). The three other stars of the Square are among the brightest in the constellation: magnitude +2.45 Markab (alpha [α] Pegasi) lies at the bottom right (south-western) corner), magnitude +2.4 Scheat (beta [β] Pegasi) sits at top right (north-west), and magnitude +2.8 Algenib (gamma [γ] Pegasi) marks the bottom left (south-eastern) corner.

Lying within the Square, about 2.5 degrees north-west of Algenib, is NGC 7814 (Caldwell 43), a very nice edge-on galaxy shining at magnitude +10.5. It is sometimes called the ‘Little Sombrero’, as it is reminiscent of the magnificent Sombrero Galaxy (Messier 104) in Virgo, but NGC 7814 is much smaller, spanning only 6.3 × 2.6 arcminutes. NGC 7814 is an easy capture for a 150mm (six-inch) telescope.

NGC 7741 is another galaxy located within the confines of the Square, found 6 degrees south-west of Alpheratz. It’s an attractive imaging target, but is a real challenge for a 250mm (10-inch) telescope, glowing at magnitude +11.4, a magnitude or so fainter than NGC 7814, across its 4 x 2.8 arcminute form.

One final target of note within the Square is the galaxy grouping of NGC 7769, 7770 and 7769. The former and latter are nice eleventh-magnitude spirals that can be observed through apertures in the 250-300mm (10- to 12-inch) range, but the real appeal is the group’s attractiveness in deep images.

A good measure of your sky quality is to count the number of stars that you can see within the Great Square of Pegasus – not including the corner stars of the Square itself. You can work out your limiting magnitude according to the number of stars seen using the following table.

Visible naked-eye stars within square	Limiting magnitude	Sky conditions
1	4.5	Poor
4	5	Average
7	5.5	Good
13	6	Very good
35	6.5	Excellent

Explore Puppis’ Messier cluster trio

This time of the year is open cluster season for sure, with a whole host of prime examples of the species to choose from. Why not head in the direction of the under-observed southern constellation of Puppis to observe Messier 46 (NGC 2437), Messier 47 (NGC 2422) and Messier 93 (NGC 2447), a superb trio of clusters.

M46 and M47 lie under 1.5° apart in a sparkling, star-studded winter Milky Way field, and are great objects to view together through a pair of 10 x 50 binoculars. There’s an added bonus too: peering through a moderate- to large-aperture telescope will reveal tenth-magnitude NGC 2438, a tiny planetary nebula that’s embedded within M46’s swarming stars. M93 lies nearly 20° south and with a declination of 23° south, can prove a challenging target from mid-northern latitudes.

M46 and M47

Puppis’ northern region is reasonably well seen from UK shores; if you can see Sirius (alpha [α] Canis Majoris), then M46 and M47, located around 13° east of the brightest star in the sky, are accessible to you. Along with Carina and Vela, Puppis formed part of the huge constellation Argo Navis, specifically the stern, or poop of the ship of the Argonauts, until that unwieldy beast was split up by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, in 1763.

Messier 47, the more westerly-lying cluster, shines with an integrated magnitude of +4.4, making it the brighter of the pair. A small telescope shows around 30 stars among half a dozen or so brighter members, with many more becoming visible through a 250mm (10-inch) aperture. M47 spans around a full-Moon-sized half a degree. M47 has a dozen or so bright members which give impact visually.

The rich seventh-magnitude open cluster NGC 2423 lies just over half a degree north-northeast of M47. Images show the cluster is less spherical overall than its Messier neighbours, with an extension to the north-east which rather blends into the rich Milky Way background.

Messier 46, which lies just 1.3° to the east-south-east of M47, its close neighbour on the sky, sports a similar apparent diameter but shines significantly fainter, having an integrated magnitude of +6.1. It lacks the immediate impact of M47’s brighter members, but makes up for that by being richer in fainter stars, giving it the appearance of a very loose globular cluster. A telescope of 100- to 150mm (four- to six-inches) aperture can reveal over 100 stars on a transparent and moonless night at a dark-sky location.

M46 and M47 are not close neighbours in space; at a distance of around 4,500 light years, M46 lies two to three time farther away than M47.

In late-February, Messier 46 and 47 cross the southern meridian from London at around 9pm GMT, culminating not far short of 25 degrees in altitude. In addition to Sirius, alpha Monocerotis is a handy, magnitude +3.9 guide star which lies 5.3 degrees due north of Messier 46.

Go low for M93

Messier 93 is a very rich cluster of stellar jewels, picturesquely set in Puppis’ crowded winter Milky Way star fields, with magnitude +3.3 xi (x) Puppis lying just 1.5 Messier 93 is a very rich cluster of stellar jewels, picturesquely set in Puppis’ crowded winter Milky Way star fields, with magnitude +3.3 xi (x) Puppis lying just 1.5° to the south-east. Sirius lies 15° to the north-west.

M93 has around 80 stars that are confirmed cluster members spread over around 10’, giving it an integrated magnitude of +6.2, within range of binoculars despite it horizon-hugging environment. M93 culminates at about 9pm an altitude of around 15° from the south of England.

What are the true colors of images from the James Webb Space Telescope?

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is known for capturing our universe with unprecedented precision and sensitivity. Its images aren't only scientifically useful but also beautiful. From the blue and gold of the Southern Ring Nebula to the pink, orange and purple of Cassiopeia A, JWST images render the universe in brilliant color.

The images are so stunning, you might wonder, —do these cosmic objects really look that colorful? What would they look like if we could see them with our own eyes, instead of through a telescope?

"The quickest answer is, we don't know," said Alyssa Pagan, a science visuals developer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and part of the team that works to bring color to the JWST images. But one thing is for sure: You wouldn't see the universe like this.

JWST is an infrared telescope, meaning it "looks" at the universe in wavelengths of light that are longer than that of red light, which has the longest wavelength we can detect with our eyes.

If you could look directly at these objects, you might see something closer to images from telescopes that rely on visual light, like the Hubble Space Telescope, Pagan said. But even that comparison isn't quite right, since Hubble is much bigger and more sensitive than the human eye. Also, visual-light telescopes might capture different features of an image than an infrared telescope would, even when focused on the same target.

So how are the colors for these spectacular images chosen, then? JWST targets are viewed through several filters attached to the telescope, which "see" in a certain range of wavelengths of infrared light. JWST's Near Infrared Camera, the telescope's main camera, has six filters, all of which capture slightly different images. Combining these images into a composite allows Pagan and Joe DePasquale, another science visual developer at the STScI for JWST, to create the full-color images.

When Pagan and DePasquale first receive the images, they appear in black and white. The colors are added to the image later, as the data from the various filters are translated into the spectrum of visible light, Pagan explained. The longest wavelengths appear red, while the shorter wavelengths are blue or purple.

"We are using that relationship with wavelengths and the color of light, and we're just applying that to the infrared," Pagan said.=

Once each color has been added to the image, it might go through some additional alterations. Sometimes, the original colors can make an image look faded or dusty, and the colors are made more vivid to give it a sharper quality. The colors might also be shifted to emphasize certain hard-to-spot features.

Pagan and DePasquale also work with researchers to make sure the images are scientifically accurate, particularly if they are presented alongside a particular scientific finding, Pagan said. Though the color images don't provide specific scientific data, they can help illustrate certain findings.

Sometimes they also can help scientists see areas they might want to research, Pagan said. For instance, the most distant objects in JWST's first deep-field view — which appear red because light traveling such a distance had been stretched out — presented targets for research on the early universe when these objects would have existed as they appeared in the deep-field image.

The colors in JWST's images may not be "real," but don't get the wrong idea — the colors aren't meant to trick you, and they aren't chosen only to look good. The images are intended to communicate as clearly as possible what JWST can see — and what our eyes can't.

"We're just trying to enhance things to make it more scientifically digestible and also engaging," Pagan said.

You can see some of the differences between images from visual-light and infrared telescopes by comparing images of the iconic Pillars of Creation taken by JWST and Hubble. While large portions of the pillars appear dark red in the Hubble image, the JWST image depicts most of the formation in golden and orange tones. This means that the visual light emitted by the pillars is longer wavelength (red) but a bit closer to the middle of the spectrum of infrared light depicted in the image.

Much of the hazy material that surrounds the pillars in the Hubble image, and even some of the materials of the pillars themselves, is also absent from the JWST image, meaning this portion of gas and dust is transparent in infrared. The JWST image also highlights more areas of star formation in red, which are obscured by thick clouds of gas and dust in the Hubble image.

New view of the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way hints at an exciting hidden feature (image)

Astronomers have captured the first view of polarized light and the magnetic fields that surround Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milly Way.

The historic observation made with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has revealed the neatly ordered magnetic fields have similarities with those that surround the supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy M87. This is surprising given that Sgr A* has a mass of around 4.3 million times that of the sun, but M87* is much more monstrous, with a mass equivalent to around 6.5 billion suns.

The new EHT observation of Sgr A*, therefore, suggests that strong and well-organized magnetic fields could be common to all black holes. Also, because M87*'s magnetic fields drive powerful outflows or "jets," the results hint that Sgr A* could have a hidden and faint jet all of its own.

"This new image of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way, Sgr A*, tells us that near the black hole are strong, twisted, and ordered magnetic fields," Sara Issaoun, research co-leader and NASA Hubble Fellowship Program Einstein Fellow at the Center for Astrophysics (CfA) at Harvard & Smithsonian told Space.com "For a while, we've believed that magnetic fields play a key role in how black holes feed and eject matter in powerful jets.

"This new image, along with a strikingly similar polarization structure seen in the much larger and more powerful M87* black hole, shows that strong and ordered magnetic fields are critical to how black holes interact with the gas and matter around them."

The EHT is comprised of many telescopes across the globe, including the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), which come together to form an Earth-sized telescope that is no stranger to making scientific history.

In 2017, the EHT captured the first image of a black hole and its environment, imaging M87* located around 53.5 million light-years from Earth. Two years after this image was revealed to the public in 2019, the EHT collaboration revealed the first look at polarized light around a black hole, M87*, once again.

Polarization happens when the orientation waves of light are directed at a particular angle. The magnetic fields generated by plasma whipping around black holes polarize light at a 90-degree angle to themselves. That means observing the polarization around M87* allowed scientists to "see" the magnetic fields around a black hole for the first time.

This was followed in 2022 by the revelation that the EHT had also imaged a supermassive black hole much closer to Earth at just 27,000 light-years away, Sgr A*, the black hole around which the Milky Way is sculpted.

Now, the EHT has finally provided scientists with an image of polarized light and, thus, the magnetic fields around this supermassive black hole.

"Polarized light is what teaches us about magnetic fields, the properties of the gas, and mechanisms that take place as a black hole feeds," Issaoun said. "Given the additional challenges to image Sgr A*, it is honestly surprising enough that we were able to get a polarization image in the first place!"

These challenges arose despite Sgr A* being closer to Earth, because the smaller size of the Milky Way's supermassive black hole means that the material that whips around it at near light-speeds is difficult to image. M87* is much larger, meaning the material, while traveling at the same speed, more or less, takes much longer to complete a circuit, making it easier for the EHT to capture.

Overcoming these difficulties means a comparison can now be made between two black holes at the opposite ends of the supermassive black hole spectrum, one with billions of times the mass of the sun and another with a mass millions of times that of our star. The initial conclusion is these magnetic fields are remarkably similar to one another.

"This similarity was especially surprising because M87* and Sgr A* are very different black holes," Issaoun said. "M87* is quite a special black hole: It is 6 billion solar masses, it lives in a giant elliptical galaxy, and it ejects a powerful jet of plasma visible at all wavelengths.

"Sgr A*, on the other hand, is extremely common: It is 4 million solar masses, it lives in our ordinary spiral Milky Way galaxy, and it doesn’t seem to have a jet at all."

Issaoun explained that just by looking at the portion of the light that is polarized, the team had expected to learn about the different properties of the magnetic fields of M87* and Sgr A*.

"Perhaps one would be more ordered and strong, and the other more disordered and weak," Issaoun added. "However, because they look similar again, it is now quite clear that these two different classes of black holes have very similar magnetic field geometry!"

The results suggest a deeper investigation of Sgr A* may uncover hitherto undiscovered features.

The polarization of light and neat and strong magnetic fields of Sgr A*, and the fact that they closely resemble that of M87*, may indicate that our central black hole has been hiding a secret from us until now.

"We expect strong and ordered magnetic fields to be directly linked to the launching of jets as we observed for M87*," Issaoun explained. "Since Sgr A*, with no observed jet, seems to have a very similar geometry, perhaps there is also a jet lurking in Sgr A* waiting to be observed, which would be super exciting!"

Astronomers hadn't been terribly surprised not to see a jet from Sgr A*. That's because M87* is surrounded by so much gas and dust that it consumes the equivalent of two or three suns each year. That means plenty of material for its magnetic fields to channel to its poles and blast out as jets.

Sgr A*, on the other hand, consumes so little matter it is equivalent to a human being eating one grain of rice every million years. These observations suggest that our dieting supermassive black hole may still have a jet; it is just difficult to see.

"There is a lot of evidence of possible outflows and even jets powered by the black hole in the past, yet a jet in Sgr A* has never been imaged due to the difficult environment of the galactic center," Issaoun said."Finding a jet would be a major revelation about our black hole and a link to its history within our Milky Way."

She added that the process that launches these jets is the most energetic mechanism in the entire universe, dramatically affecting the heart of galaxies by, for instance, clearing out the gas and dust needed to birth stars and influencing how galaxies grow and evolve. That means discovering a jet emerging from Sgr A* would influence our understanding of how the Milky Way evolved to take the shape astronomers observe today.

"It is so striking that such large-scale damage can be caused by such a small nucleus in a galaxy, and it all starts at the edge of the central black hole, where these magnetic fields rule," Issaoun continued.

Issaoun said that with these two polarized images of very different black holes, scientists now have very compelling evidence that strong magnetic fields are ubiquitous to these cosmic titans.

"The next step," she said, "involves figuring out how that geometry connects to how these systems move, evolve, and flare."

The EHT will kick off its 2024 observing campaign in early April, with the collaboration hoping to get multi-color views of familiar black holes like M87* and Sgr A* by observing them in different frequencies of light.

"In the next decade, the next-generation EHT effort aims to add more telescopes to fill in our Earth-sized virtual mirror and observe a lot more often," Issaoun added. "With these expansions of the EHT, we will be able to make polarized movies of black holes and will directly observe the dynamics between the M87* black hole and its jet."

Additionally, the CfA researcher said the EHT could eventually get some space-based help observing black holes and their dynamics. One proposed mission that could assist in this is the Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) mission concept, which adds a single space telescope to the Earth-based EHT array.

"How much black holes rotate, their spin is believed to be directly connected to why magnetic fields near the black hole look the way they look and how they can launch jets," Issaoun concluded. "With BHEX, we could image the sharp photon ring signature of black holes. This photon ring encodes properties of the spacetime around the black hole, including the black hole's spin!"

The EHT team's research was published on Wednesday (March 27) in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.