The MATISSE instrument when it was built at NOVA and had not yet been installed in Chile at the VLT. Credit: NOVA
Nanometer accuracy
Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA) built all the lenses and mirrors in the cooled part of MATISSE together with the Dutch area industry. The Netherlands had acquired experience while establishing its leader MIDI, which might link two telescopes instead of four.
The heart where the beams of the 4 VLT telescopes assemble, includes 2 aluminum boxes that are practically a meter in size. These boxes are filled to the brim with numerous optical components, lots of sensing units and lots of tiny motors. Many of the parts deal with nanometer accuracy or even greater.
The left panel of this image shows a dazzling view of the active galaxy Messier 77 captured with the FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph 2 (FORS2) instrument on ESOs Very Large Telescope. For more on this discovery, see Supermassive Black Hole Caught Hiding in an Immense Ring of Cosmic Dust.
Referral: “Thermal imaging of dust hiding the black hole in the Active Galaxy NGC 1068” by Violeta Gámez Rosas, Jacob W. Isbell, Walter Jaffe, Romain G. Petrov, James H. Leftley, Karl-Heinz Hofmann, Florentin Millour, Leonard Burtscher, Klaus Meisenheimer, Anthony Meilland, Laurens B. F. M. Waters, Bruno Lopez, Stéphane Lagarde, Gerd Weigelt, Philippe Berio, Fatme Allouche, Sylvie Robbe-Dubois, Pierre Cruzalèbes, Felix Bettonvil, Thomas Henning, Jean-Charles Augereau, Pierre Antonelli, Udo Beckmann, Roy van Boekel, Philippe Bendjoya, William C. Danchi, Carsten Dominik, Julien Drevon, Jack F. Gallimore, Uwe Graser, Matthias Heininger, Vincent Hocdé, Michiel Hogerheijde, Josef Hron, Caterina M. V. Impellizzeri, Lucia Klarmann, Elena Kokoulina, Lucas Labadie, Michael Lehmitz, Alexis Matter, Claudia Paladini, Eric Pantin, Jörg-Uwe Pott, Dieter Schertl, Anthony Soulain, Philippe Stee, Konrad Tristram, Jozsef Varga, Julien Woillez, Sebastian Wolf, Gideon Yoffe and Gerard Zins, 16 February 2022, Nature.DOI: 10.1038/ s41586-021-04311-7.
This illustration reveals what the core of Messier 77 might appear like. As other active stellar nuclei, the main region of Messier 77 is powered by a black hole that is surrounded by a thin accretion disc, which itself is surrounded by a thick ring or torus of gas and dust. When it comes to Messier 77, this thick ring completely obscures our view of the supermassive black hole.This active galactic nucleus is also thought to have jets, as well as dirty winds, that drain of the region around the great void perpendicularly to the accretion disc around it.Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser and L. CalçadaAn global team of astronomers led by Violeta Gámez Rosas (Leiden University) has actually observed a supermassive great void hidden in a ring of dust. This discovery fits the concept that the so-called active centers of galaxies are a lot more similar than observations reveal, because the viewing angle from Earth causes distortions. The research study was finished with the MATISSE instrument, co-developed in the Netherlands, which combines infrared light from four European Very Large Telescopes (VLT) in Chile.Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are incredibly energetic sources powered by supermassive great voids. This short video supplies insights into these peculiar things by showcasing a new discovery on the AGN at the center of the Messier 77 galaxy. Credit: ESO
MATISSE not just pairs the light from the VLT, but also examines it. MATISSE is cooled to minus 241 degrees Celsius so the instrument itself does not interfere with the measurements.
As other active galactic nuclei, the central region of Messier 77 is powered by a black hole that is surrounded by a thin accretion disc, which itself is surrounded by a thick ring or torus of gas and dust. In the case of Messier 77, this thick ring totally obscures our view of the supermassive black hole.This active galactic nucleus is likewise believed to have jets, as well as dirty winds, that flow out of the area around the black hole perpendicularly to the accretion disc around it.Credit: ESO/M. The research was done with the MATISSE instrument, co-developed in the Netherlands, which combines infrared light from 4 European Very Large Telescopes (VLT) in Chile.Active stellar nuclei (AGNs) are extremely energetic sources powered by supermassive black holes. For more on this discovery, see Supermassive Black Hole Caught Hiding in an Immense Ring of Cosmic Dust.