Fuel For Black Holes

[tblaxland]

Fuel For Black Holes - SpaceRef

An international research team led by Gerd Weigelt from the Max-Planck-Institut fuer Radioastronomie in Bonn reports on high-resolution studies of an active galactic nucleus in the near-infrared. The observations were carried out with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

The use of near-infrared interferometry allowed the team to resolve a ring-shaped dust distribution (generally called "dust torus") in the inner region of the nucleus of the active galaxy NGC 3783...The resolved dust torus has an angular radius of only 0.7 milliarcseconds on the sky, an angle that is 5 million times smaller than one degree. This angular radius corresponds to a radius of approximately 0.5 light-year for a distance of 130 million light-years.

By my calculations, that is the same as resolving a feature on 3 m across on the Moon :blink:

 

[Loru]

The power of human ingenuity. I think that's most accurate AGN data so far.

 

[Keatah]

Fuel For Black Holes - SpaceRef

By my calculations, that is the same as resolving a feature on 3 m across on the Moon :blink:

My lady came up 1.9m ??

 

[tblaxland]

My lady came up 1.9m ??

Perhaps you are calculating radius? I calculated diameter, and at apogee.

 

[Jarvitä]

Fuel For Black Holes - SpaceRef

By my calculations, that is the same as resolving a feature on 3 m across on the Moon :blink:

Fairly impressive, but keep in mind this is an entire array configured as an interferometer, it's not just a single telescope.

 

[Urwumpe]

Fairly impressive, but keep in mind this is an entire array configured as an interferometer, it's not just a single telescope.

Yes, and requires a higher brightness of the target than the background. The moon would be too bright to resolve something that way.

 

[tblaxland]

Fairly impressive, but keep in mind this is an entire array configured as an interferometer, it's not just a single telescope.

Yes, I am aware, but I thought the feat was impressive enough to report. There are some other near-infrared interferometers with larger baselines but not using as large aperture scopes as VLTI.

Yes, and requires a higher brightness of the target than the background. The moon would be too bright to resolve something that way.

Of course - it was an attempt at an analogy on a more "local" scale

 

[RisingFury]

I wonder if they were able to get a spectrum of light coming from the accretion disc as a function of radius. If they did that, we can test our models of accretion discs.