CITA Researcher Helps Locate the “Missing Link” in Giant Black Hole’s Power Source
New data from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has provided scientists with a first-of-its-kind look at the “exhaust pipe” of a supermassive black hole.
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) + NIRCam RBG image of the giant elliptical galaxy M87. The stream of the glowing torch represents the jet. The visible part spans around 3000 light-years. Credits: Jan Röder, Maciek Wielgus, Joseph B. Jensen, Gagandeep S. Anand, R. Brent Tully, 2025.
Sebastiano von Fellenberg, a postdoctoral researcher at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA), is part of an international team that has identified the likely starting point of a massive cosmic jet — a powerful stream of particles being blasted out from the heart of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87).
The discovery, published today in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, contributes to the uncovering of a major mystery in space science: exactly where black holes launch these 5,000-light-year-long streams of energy into the universe.
Finding the Engine Room
At the center of the M87 galaxy lies a black hole with a mass six billion times that of our Sun. While black holes are famous for pulling matter in, they also act as massive engines that eject streams of charged particles—known as “jets”—at nearly the speed of light.
“By identifying where the jet originates and how it connects to the black hole’s shadow, we are adding key pieces to the puzzle,” says Saurabh, the study’s lead author from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy.
The “Middle View” Discovery
To see this, the team used the Event Horizon Telescope, a global network of radio dishes that work together to create a single virtual telescope the size of the Earth. In the past, the radio observations have provided two different views of M87:
- The pre-2021 EHT observations provided the Extreme Close-Up: A “zoomed-in” view showing the famous glowing ring of hot gas around the black hole’s shadow.
- Lower frequency radio observations provided the Wide Angle: A “zoomed-out” view showing the long, thin jet stretching across the galaxy.
The “missing link” has always been the area in between—the transition where the glowing ring becomes the jet. By analyzing new data from 2021, von Fellenberg and his colleagues utilized “intermediate” telescope distances to see this middle ground for the first time.
They discovered that the glowing ring alone couldn’t explain all the light they were seeing. Through detailed computer modeling, they found that the “missing light” matches a specific spot about 0.09 light-years away from the black hole. This, they believe, is the place of origin of the black hole’s jet.
A New Era of Black Hole Imaging
The contribution from CITA and the international team marks a shift from simply theorizing about black holes to observing their direct environment. To capture this elusive region, the team relied on a technique called “calibration”—a complex process of cleaning up raw data from the Earth-sized virtual telescope. Sebastiano von Fellenberg of CITA led the calibration for the 2021 M87* observations. By precisely correcting for atmospheric interference and slight hardware differences between telescopes scattered across the globe, he essentially “cleared the static,” allowing the team to see the faint signals of the jet’s origin that were previously hidden.
“Newly observed data—now being processed with support from our international partners—will soon include even more telescopes and thus intermediate baselines,” says Sebastiano von Fellenberg of CITA. “This will bring an even sharper view of the jet launching region within reach. We aren’t just calculating where these structures are anymore; we are moving toward being able to image them directly.”
Observations from 2018 (left), conducted with the Global mm-VLBI Array (GMVA) at frequencies of 86 GHz, show not only the ring around the supermassive black hole M87*, but also a jet that splits into a northern and southern component. At higher frequencies of 230 GHz (right), the EHT data show fine details of the ring, but cannot yet image the jet. A compact region that coincides with the southern part of the jet at 86 GHz best explains the missing radiation at 230 GHz observed at different spatial scales. Figure credit: (Lu. et al. 2023 + Saurabh et al. 2026)
Professor Bart Ripperda, who leads a research group at CITA that studies the causes for the ejection of these powerful streams of charged particles, also explains:
“The jets are theorized to be launched tapping the rotational energy of the black hole through electromagnetism, such that they are a laboratory where general relativity and quantum electrodynamics (the two most successful theories of the 20th century) act together. Seeing how jets are launched so close to the event horizon of the black hole is a major step in the understanding of black holes!”
Observational data, such as the one presented in this paper, allows scientists to test their theories on how gravity and magnetism interact in the most extreme environments in the universe, bringing us one step closer to understanding the “engines” that shape entire galaxies.
Read more at Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, NewsWise, Spektrum der Wissenschaft and Scientific American.
About CITA
The Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) is a nationally supported research institute for theoretical astronomy and astrophysics, located at the University of Toronto. With a dual mission to foster dynamic interactions within the Canadian astrophysics community and to serve as a beacon of international excellence, CITA explores the universe’s most captivating mysteries — from the origins and evolution of the cosmos to the intricate workings of black holes and distant galaxies.
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