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Dr Anthony Rushton - ESO fellow
My research involves studying the powerful jets that are ejected from black holes and other weird objects. I am primarily a radio astronomer that uses the most sophisticated instruments in the world. These include the ALMA telescope currently under construction in Chile, the recently upgrade e-MERLIN telescope in the UK, the new LOFAR telescope that is mostly based in the Netherlands and VLBI telescopes across the globe. However, in order to understand the complex astrophysics associated with high-energy jets, one must also study the complete electromagnetic spectrum, therefore my research is often co-ordinated with Gamma/X-ray space telescopes and other ground-based telescopes. |
How can you detect a black hole? Once something passes beyond the event horizon of a black hole it is impossible for it to ever escape (with the possible exception of Hawking radiation). Therefore you might argue that it is not possible to "see" any black hole; however, we can measure the effects of a black hole on it's surrounding space, especially if matter from a nearby star is accreting onto the object. As matter falls towards the event horizon it forms a disk-like accretion pattern that emit very high-energy photons in the form of X-rays and Gamma rays. Peculiarly, some (if not all) accretion disks eject part of the in-falling matter into highly confined beams or jets in two opposite directions. Stranger still, scientists have observed jets coming from black holes that range in sizes from as small as our own solar system to that of an entire galaxy!
European Southern Observatory | Onsala Space Observatory
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