The Event Horizon Telescope ( EHT ) collaboration , who produced the first ever image of a black hole released in 2019 , has today a new view of the massive object at the center of the Messier 87 ( M87 ) galaxy : how it looks in polarized light . This is the firsttime astronomers have been able to measure polarization , a signature of magnetic fields , this close to the edge of a black hole . This image shows the polarized view of the black hole in M87 . The lines mark the orientation of polarization , which is related to the magnetic field around the shadow of the black hole .
This image combines observations of the nearby galaxies NGC 1300 , NGC 1087 , NGC 3627 ( top , from left to right ), NGC 4254 and NGC 4303 ( bottom , from left to right ) taken with the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer ( MUSE ) on
ESO ’ s Very Large Telescope ( VLT ). Each individual image is a combination of observations conducted at different wavelengths of light to map stellar populations and warm gas . The golden glows mainly correspond to clouds of ionised hydrogen , oxygen and sulphur gas , marking the presence of newly born stars , while the bluish regions in the background reveal the distribution of slightly older stars . The images were taken as part of the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS ( PHANGS ) project , which is making highresolution observations of nearby galaxies with telescopes operating across the electromagnetic spectrum .