An origin of the radio jet in m87 at the location of the central black hole

ABSTRACT Powerful radio jets from active galactic nuclei are thought to be powered by the accretion of material onto the supermassive black hole (the ‘central engine’)1,2. M87 is one of the

closest examples of this phenomenon, and the structure of its jet has been probed on a scale of about 100 Schwarzschild radii (_R_s, the radius of the event horizon)3. However, the location

of the central black hole relative to the jet base (a bright compact radio ‘core’) remains elusive4,5. Observations of other jets indicate that the central engines are located about

104–106_R_s upstream from the radio core6,7,8,9. Here we report radio observations of M87 at six frequencies that allow us to achieve a positional accuracy of about 20 microarcseconds. As

the jet base becomes more transparent at higher frequencies, the multifrequency position measurements of the radio core enable us to determine the upstream end of the jet. The data reveal

that the central engine of M87 is located within 14–23_R_s of the radio core at 43 GHz. This implies that the site of material infall onto the black hole and the eventual origin of the jet

reside in the bright compact region seen on the image at 43 GHz. Access through your institution Buy or subscribe This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

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about institutional subscriptions * Read our FAQs * Contact customer support SIMILAR CONTENT BEING VIEWED BY OTHERS PRECESSING JET NOZZLE CONNECTING TO A SPINNING BLACK HOLE IN M87 Article

27 September 2023 COUPLING BETWEEN THE ACCRETING CORONA AND THE RELATIVISTIC JET IN THE MICROQUASAR GRS 1915+105 Article 07 March 2022 ULTRA-HIGH-ENERGY GAMMA-RAY BUBBLE AROUND MICROQUASAR

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Google Scholar  Download references ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We thank M. Honma, H. Sudou and T. Hirota for discussions about the astrometry analysis; and K. Asada, G. Giovannini, M. Giroletti, M.

Inoue, S. Kameno, S. Koide, S. Sasaki, Ł. Stawarz, N. Sugiyama and N. Yoshida for comments. The Very Long Baseline Array is operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a facility

of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. This work was supported in part by the Graduate University for Advanced Studies

(Sokendai). AUTHOR INFORMATION AUTHORS AND AFFILIATIONS * Department of Astronomical Science, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI), 2-21-1 Osawa, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-8588,

Japan Kazuhiro Hada, Yoshiaki Hagiwara & Noriyuki Kawaguchi * National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, 2-21-1 Osawa, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-8588, Japan Kazuhiro Hada, Motoki Kino, Hiroshi

Nagai, Yoshiaki Hagiwara & Noriyuki Kawaguchi * Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, 3-1-1 Yoshinodai, Chuo, Sagamihara, Kanagawa 252-5210,

Japan Akihiro Doi & Hiroshi Nagai * Department of Space and Astronautical Science, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI), 3-1-1 Yoshinodai, Chuo, Sagamihara, Kanagawa

252-5210, Japan Akihiro Doi Authors * Kazuhiro Hada View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Akihiro Doi View author publications You can also

search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Motoki Kino View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Hiroshi Nagai View author publications You

can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Yoshiaki Hagiwara View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Noriyuki Kawaguchi View

author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar CONTRIBUTIONS K.H., A.D. and H.N. designed and proposed the VLBA observations. K.H. led the work and together

with A.D. performed the data analysis. K.H., M.K. and Y.H. jointly wrote the paper. N.K. checked the manuscript. All the authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

CORRESPONDING AUTHOR Correspondence to Kazuhiro Hada. ETHICS DECLARATIONS COMPETING INTERESTS The authors declare no competing financial interests. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION SUPPLEMENTARY

INFORMATION This file contains Supplementary Methods, Supplementary References, Supplementary Figures 1-5 with legends and Supplementary Tables 1-2. (PDF 3741 kb) POWERPOINT SLIDES

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Kino, M. _et al._ An origin of the radio jet in M87 at the location of the central black hole. _Nature_ 477, 185–187 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10387 Download citation * Received:

31 January 2011 * Accepted: 27 July 2011 * Published: 07 September 2011 * Issue Date: 08 September 2011 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10387 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Anyone you share the

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