The black hole is a space phenomenon whose discovery is fairly recent, with Albert Einstein's studies on the Theory of General Relativity. After that, its representation became present in movies, series and games. But would you be able to identify one? Black Hole in a photo full of bright spots that look like a star?
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In the image below, you will notice a black background and superstars. However, what could be just a night full of stars are actually active black holes.
Active in galaxies that are located light years away from planet Earth, black holes are intensely absorbing matter, from its strong gravitational field that has the power to absorb up to the light.
The image, which is not recent and was made public in 2021, contains about 25,000 points of light, which are actually black holes. Capturing the image required years of joint efforts by astronomers and physicists, according to Francesco de Gasperin of the University of Hamburg in Germany.
To obtain the record of the black hole, it was necessary to convert radio signals, at low frequency, into images that would represent the sky, argues the astronomer from Hamburg.
When they are not active, black holes are difficult to identify. However, while they actively absorb matter, the gravitational force present is capable of producing radiation of different wavelengths. This is the only way to detect their presence.
In the case of the image above, the black holes were captured with the help of the Low Frequency ARray (LOFAR), a network of radio telescopes with about 20,000 antennas spread across Europe.
Unlike other networks, LOFAR is able to obtain images in high resolution at frequencies less than 100 megahertz (MHz). To correct distortions caused by interference from the inosphere, which becomes opaque at frequencies below 5MHz, supercomputers were used.
This evolution is a leap for the scientific community, which celebrates: “After developing the software for many years ago, it's amazing to see that it's now working," says Huub Röttgering of the Leiden Observatory, located in Netherlands.