Stellar shades

 

Polarised sunglasses reveal new side to supermassive black holes.

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Researchers have found a new way of viewing the disks of matter surrounding black holes.
 
By using polarising filters, astronomers at the Science and Technology Facility Council UK’s Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii have found that they can see through the clouds of gas and dust surrounding the black hole to penetrate through for a better view.
 
As supermassive black holes are believed to be at the centre of most galaxies, understanding them is a fundamental tenet of astronomy.
 
Commenting on the development, Andy Lawrence, of the University of Edinburgh'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.”
 
The researchers can now make important headway into understanding the formation of the disk and its material composition.

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