Astronomers capture image of a second black hole. And it’s very different to the first one

In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope made history when it captured the very first image of a supermassive black hole in the M87 galaxy.

Now, it has zoomed in on a second supermassive black hole, this time in the centre of a galaxy called Centaurus A.

The new images capture a fiery jet of super-hot gas being spat out from the heart of the galaxy, allowing astronomers to pinpoint the location of its supermassive black hole.

The findings, published today in Nature Astronomy, could give clues about how these mysterious cosmic jets are generated.

“This has been seen before, but never quite so clearly,” said study co-author Phil Edwards, an astronomer at the CSIRO.

“The detail that can be seen is something like seeing an apple on the surface of the Moon from the Earth.”