EMBARGOED For Release: 2:00 p.m. EDT, Thursday, July 2, 2009

Graphics: VLBA Locates Origin of Superenergetic Bursts Near Giant Black Hole

Peering Deeper Into the Core of M87: At top left, a VLA image of the galaxy shows the radio-emitting jets at a scale of about 200,000 light-years. Subsequent zooms progress closer into the galaxy's core, where the supermassive black hole resides. In the artist's conception (background). the black hole illustrated at the center is about twice the size of our Solar System, a tiny fraction of the size of the galaxy, but holding some six billion times the mass of the Sun.
CREDIT: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF

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 Medium-res JPEG (275 KB)
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Same Image as Above, Without Labels
CREDIT: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF

Low-res JPEG (86 KB)
 Medium-res JPEG (261 KB)
 High-res TIFF (24.1 MB)



Artists's Conception of M87's inner core: Black hole, accretion disk, and inner jets.
CREDIT: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF

Low-res JPEG (58 KB)
 Medium-res JPEG (231 KB)
 High-res TIFF (16.3 MB)



Large-scale VLA image of M87: White circle indicates the area within which the gamma-ray telescopes could tell the very energetic gamma rays were being emitted. To narrow down the location further required the VLBA.
CREDIT: NRAO/AUI/NSF

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"Light Curves" of very-high-energy gamma rays and radio waves emitted by M87, showing that radio flare followed gamma-ray flare.
CREDIT: VERITAS, VLBA, H.E.S.S., and MAGIC Collaborations, NRAO/AUI/NSF

JPEG (103 KB)
 Encapsulated PostScript (vector) File (21 KB)



Modified on Monday, 29-Jun-2009 10:59:01 EDT