Earth-size Telescope Spots A '7.5 Bn Years' Old Light

After capturing the first image of the black hole in the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has now trained its lenses on one of the brightest phenomena in the universe, according to a media report on Tuesday.

The report suggests the telescope viewing the heart of a quasar, an extremely powerful source of radiation.

Nasa claims, Quasars are bright objects in space similar to a star and at a great distance from Earth and give off powerful radio waves. 

It is commendable that the Earth-size virtual radio telescope is able to view the inner parts of the quasar NRAO 530 despite being far away from earth than any other known object in the universe.

While quasars are powered by supermassive black holes funnelling accelerated particles and radiation into bright thin jets, making them significant for astronomers to decode their complicated physics. 

The EHT thus offers a high, unprecedented angular resolution that allows astronomers to image previously unseen structures in the central region of NRAO 530. As it is not a single telescope located on some remote mountain range. Instead, it is a collaboration of networked radio telescopes located worldwide coming together to view one precise destination, all at once, all at the same time.

Meanwhile, the telescope picked up the light from the brightest object that is travelling for 7.5 billion years, making it the most distant object imaged by the EHT so far.

Researchers are leaving no stone unturned using various imaging algorithms to better the captured structure of an object on fine scales that are opaque at longer wavelengths.

A bright feature located on the southern end of the jet is revealed in the image which the authors associate with the VLBI core at millimetre wavelengths.