Journal Article

Precessing jet nozzle connecting to a spinning black hole in M87

Lee, Jeong Ae, Sawada-Satoh, Satoko, Melnikov, Alexey, Wang, Jinqing, Zhang, Hua, Akiyama, Kazunori, Zhang, Yingkang, Cho, Ilje, Niinuma, Kotaro, Oh, Chung-Sik, Yu, Jintao, Buttaccio, Salvatore, Maccaferri, Giuseppe, Sohn, Bong Won, Lin, Weikang, Jung, Taehyun, Oyama, Tomoaki, Asada, Keiichi, Ro, Hyunwook, Ohsuga, Ken, Yi, Kunwoo, Zhong, Weiye, Tazaki, Fumie, Kawaguchi, Noriyuki, Hodgson, Jeffrey, Wang, Shiqiang, Hagiwara, Yoshiaki, Honma, Mareki, Cheng, Xiaopeng, Lee, Sang-Sung, Melis, Andrea, Wang, Xuezheng, Yeom, Jae-Hwan, Roh, Duk-Gyoo, Kravchenko, Evgeniya, Yonekura, Yoshinori, Oh, Se-Jin, Liu, Qinghui, Algaba, Juan-Carlos, Hada, Kazuhiro, Sugiyama, Koichiro, Kobayashi, Hideyuki, Lee, Jee Won, Liu, Xiang, Giovannini, Gabriele, Oh, Junghwan, An, Tao, Cui, Yuzhu, Kino, Motoki, Jung, Dong-Kyu, Yan, Hao, Wajima, Kiyoaki, Kim, Jeong-Sook, Liu, Zhiyong, Mizuno, Yosuke, Yuan, Jianping, Kawashima, Tomohisa, Jiang, Wu, Zhao, Rongbing, Byun, Do-Young, Wang, Na, Cui, Lang, Hwang, Ju-Yeon, Park, Jongho, Li, Guanghui, Shen, Zhiqiang, Lu, Ru-Sen, Takamura, Mieko, Xia, Bo, Trippe, Sascha, Giroletti, Marcello, Li, Xiaofei, Migoni, Carlo, L

2023

Overview

The nearby radio galaxy M87 offers a unique opportunity to explore the connections between the central supermassive black hole and relativistic jets. Previous studies of the inner region of M87 revealed a wide opening angle for the jet originating near the black hole 1 – 4 . The Event Horizon Telescope resolved the central radio source and found an asymmetric ring structure consistent with expectations from general relativity 5 . With a baseline of 17 years of observations, there was a shift in the jet’s transverse position, possibly arising from an 8- to 10-year quasi-periodicity 3 . However, the origin of this sideways shift remains unclear. Here we report an analysis of radio observations over 22 years that suggests a period of about 11 years for the variation in the position angle of the jet. We infer that we are seeing a spinning black hole that induces the Lense–Thirring precession of a misaligned accretion disk. Similar jet precession may commonly occur in other active galactic nuclei but has been challenging to detect owing to the small magnitude and long period of the variation. This study analyses radio observations of the jet in galaxy M87, from which the existence of a spinning black hole that induces Lense–Thirring precession of a misaligned accretion disk is inferred.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group
• Subject: 639/33/34/4118 / 639/33/34/4123 / Accretion disks / Active galactic nuclei / Black holes / Elliptical galaxies / Event horizon / Galaxies / Humanities and Social Sciences / Jet nozzles / multidisciplinary / Precession / Radio galaxies / Radio observation / Radio sources (astronomy) / Ring structures / Science / Science (multidisciplinary) / Simulation / Supermassive black holes / Telescopes