The orbit is elliptical, taking it down close to our planet and nearly as far out as the Moon.

But the new observations of OJ287 take it a step farther: They added in the Spektr-R 10-meter radio telescope that's in orbit around the Earth. This technique can link up radio telescopes around the world, making an Earth-sized telescope. I've written about this many times, including imaging the first ever 'shadow' of a black hole, a red giant star's surface, and exoplanets around other stars. It uses a complex process to be able to simultaneously combine the abilities of radio telescopes across the world, in essence creating a single linked telescope with the same resolution - the ability to distinguish details in an object - as one the size of the distance between them. The observations were made at radio wavelengths using a process called interferometry. A cluster of radio telescopes on Earth (bottom) show the, but including more telescopes (middle) gives higher resolution, and including an orbiting radio telescope (top) makes these observations the highest resolution of the blazar ever made.Įduardo Ros / MPIfR (Collage), Gómez et al., The Astrophysical Journal, 2022 (Bilder) Interferometeric observations of the black hole in the galaxy OJ 287 show extraordinary detail in its curving jet.

A vast disk of material called an accretion disk swirls around it, gas and dust heated to unbelievable temperatures, that heat creating the energies we see from the galaxy. The engine behind this soul-vaporizing energy is a black hole that will stomp your brain: It has a mass of over 18 billion times that of the Sun, making it one of the most massive known, and perhaps one of the most massive possible. It's best to keep a decent chunk of the Universe between you and a monster like this. Happily, it's 3.5 billion light years away. Just in that tiny central region it glows with the light of a trillion Suns, outshining the rest of the galaxy combined. It's a rare type of galaxy called a blazar, where the very center of the galaxy is blasting out light across the electromagnetic spectrum, including super-high-energy gamma rays, in prodigious quantities. And there are observations of them that also engender those same feelings. There are objects in the Universe of which I am in awe.

Black hole piercing