Black hole discovery

For the first time astronomers have found a way to get a clear view of the elusive disks of matter surrounding supermassive black holes.

By using a polarising filter on the Science and Technology Facility Council’s UK Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii, they have been able to see beyond surrounding clouds of dust and gas to the blue colour of the disk in infrared light.

It is believed that most, if not all, galaxies have a supermassive black hole in their centre, and this is an area of intense research within astronomy. Studying these black holes and discovering more about their structure can be difficult as they are so far away. Also, the clouds of gas and dust that surround the black holes make it difficult to achieve a clean, uncontaminated spectrum of the black hole vicinity.

Andy Lawrence, of Edinburgh University’s Institute for Astronomy, and co-investigator on the project, said: 'For decades there has been a theory that supermassive black holes should be accumulating materials in the form of a disk, but until now this has been impossible to test due to the contamination by the dust clouds.'