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Russian astronomers are working to send a telescope to the surface of the moon that operates in the sub-terahertz range of electromagnetic waves, to explore black holes.
Such a telescope would allow scientists to obtain detailed photographs of the regions surrounding black holes and study the movement of matter near the event horizon.
The press service of the Space Astronomy Center of the Lebedev Institute of Physics said: “The network of lunar antennas, working together with the network of ground telescopes, will allow us to see the shadows of black holes with an accuracy 30 times greater than the resolution of the EHT telescope, which will lead to a breakthrough.” In the field of studying the physics of massive black holes, she added that the lunar observatory will also explore the early universe through observations of spectral distortions of early cosmic rays and the study of some star formation problems.
This idea was put forward by a group of Russian astronomers under the leadership of the head of the Space Astronomy Center of the Lebedev Institute of Physics, Sergey Likhachev, as part of a comprehensive study of the prospects for developing sub-terahertz astronomy in Russia. Within its framework, astronomers use electromagnetic waves with frequencies of up to hundreds of gigahertz and higher to observe the most distant and strange celestial bodies in the universe, including supermassive black holes and their emissions, the first galaxies of the universe, and other celestial bodies.
As the researchers said, Russia currently does not have any telescopes capable of conducting observations at frequencies higher than 100 GHz, and only one orbital mission, the Millimeter space observatory, is scheduled to be launched. Guided by these considerations, Likhachev and his colleagues developed designs for sub-terahertz ground-based and lunar telescopes that could compensate for the lack of observing power in this range of electromagnetic waves.
In particular, scientists proposed developing an array of six antennas with a diameter of 8 meters, capable of capturing sub-terahertz radiation, and installing them on Mount Mayak in Dagestan or on the top of Mount Kholugaysha in the Sayan Mountains. A similar array of antennas could also be installed on the Moon’s surface in a permanently shaded crater or in areas near the Moon’s poles. According to astronomers, this lunar observatory can be integrated into a giant virtual antenna alongside its terrestrial counterparts and space observatories, which will use technologies that were previously used within the RadioAstron project.
Scientists hope that all of this will allow astronomers to observe the movement of matter in the immediate vicinity of supermassive black holes, including the black hole Sgr A*, located at the center of the Milky Way. It is supposed to obtain similar images of the black hole located in the M87 galaxy, whose “shadow” scientists were recently able to study using the EHT telescope, which combines the capabilities of the largest sub-terahertz observatories in the world.
Source: TASS