Jet-Launching Structure Resolved Near the Supermassive Black Hole in M87
Abstract
Approximately 10% of active galactic nuclei exhibit relativistic jets, which are powered by the accretion of matter onto supermassive black holes. Although the measured width profiles of such jets on large scales agree with theories of magnetic collimation, the predicted structure on accretion disk scales at the jet launch point has not been detected. We report radio interferometry observations, at a wavelength of 1.3 millimeters, of the elliptical galaxy M87 that spatially resolve the base of the jet in this source. The derived size of 5.5 ± 0.4 Schwarzschild radii is significantly smaller than the innermost edge of a retrograde accretion disk, suggesting that the M87 jet is powered by an accretion disk in a prograde orbit around a spinning black hole.
Additional Information
© 2012 American Association for the Advancement of Science. 16 May 2012; accepted 13 September 2012; Published online 27 September 2012. High-frequency VLBI work at the MIT Haystack Observatory is supported by grants from NSF. The Submillimeter Array is a joint project between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics. The Submillimeter Telescope is operated by the Arizona Radio Observatory (ARO). ARO is partially supported through the NSF University Radio Observatories (URO: grant AST-1140030) and ATI (grant AST-0905844) programs. The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope is operated by the Joint Astronomy Centre on behalf of the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the UK, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, and the National Research Council of Canada. Funding for ongoing CARMA development and operations is supported by NSF and the CARMA partner universities. We thank the NASA Geodesy Program for loan of the CARMA Hydrogen Maser; J. Test, P. Yamaguchi, G. Reiland, J. Hoge, and M. Hodges for technical assistance; the staff at all participating facilities; J. Gracia and J. McKinney for providing jet simulation data used in this work; and Xilinx, Inc., for equipment donations. Data used in this paper are available in the supplementary materials.Attached Files
Supplemental Material - Doeleman.SM.pdf
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- Eprint ID
- 35420
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- CaltechAUTHORS:20121113-095717230
- NSF
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2012-11-13Created from EPrint's datestamp field
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field