Free Astronomy Magazine May-June 2022

24 MAY-JUNE 2022 ASTRO PUBLISHING and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Long Baseline Array to construct their picture. “Our results should lead to a better understanding of the inner work- ings of AGNs,” concludes Gámez Rosas. “They could also help us bet- ter understand the history of the Milky Way, which harbours a super- massive black hole at its centre that may have been active in the past.” The researchers are now looking to use ESO’s VLTI to find more support- ing evidence of the Unified Model of AGNs by considering a larger sample of galaxies. T he background illustration shows what the core of Messier 77 might look like. As other active galactic nuclei, the central region of Messier 77 is pow- ered by a black hole that is surrounded by a thin accretion disc, which itself is surrounded by a thick ring or torus of gas and dust. In the case of Messier 77, this thick ring completely obscures our view of the supermassive black hole. This active galactic nucleus is also believed to have jets, as well as dusty winds, that flow out of the region around the black hole perpendicularly to the accre- tion disc around it. [ESO/M. Kornmesser and L. Calçada]