학술논문

Imaging an event horizon: Mitigation of scattering toward Sagittarius a
Document Type
article
Source
Astrophysical Journal. 795(2)
Subject
galaxies: individual
Galaxy: center
scattering
techniques: image processing
techniques: interferometric
astro-ph.IM
astro-ph.GA
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Astronomical and Space Sciences
Atomic
Molecular
Nuclear
Particle and Plasma Physics
Physical Chemistry
Atomic
Molecular
Nuclear
Particle and Plasma Physics
Physical Chemistry (incl. Structural)
Language
Abstract
The image of the emission surrounding the black hole in the center of the Milky Way is predicted to exhibit the imprint of general relativistic (GR) effects, including the existence of a shadow feature and a photon ring of diameter 50 μas. Structure on these scales can be resolved by millimeter-wavelength very long baseline interferometry. However, strong-field GR features of interest will be blurred at λ ≥ 1.3 mm due to scattering by interstellar electrons. The scattering properties are well understood over most of the relevant range of baseline lengths, suggesting that the scattering may be (mostly) invertible. We simulate observations of a model image of Sgr A∗ and demonstrate that the effects of scattering can indeed be mitigated by correcting the visibilities before reconstructing the image. This technique is also applicable to Sgr A∗ at longer wavelengths.