Black Hole Spin Signature in the Black Hole Shadow of M87 in the Flaring State

Understand

Imaging the immediate vicinity of supermassive black holes (SMBH) and extracting a BH-spin signature is one of the grand challenges in astrophysics.

• M87 is known as one of the best targets for imaging the BH shadow and it can be partially thick against synchrotron self-absorption (SSA), particularly in a flaring state with high mass accretion rate.
• However, little is known about influences of the SSA-thick region on BH shadow images.
• Here we investigate BH shadow images of M87 at 230 GHz properly taking into account the SSA-thick region.