![]() Doeleman of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. “We have taken the first picture of a black hole,” said EHT project director Sheperd S. The EHT is the result of years of international collaboration, and offers scientists a new way to study the most extreme objects in the Universe predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity during the centennial year of the historic experiment that first confirmed the theory. The EHT links telescopes around the globe to form an Earth-sized virtual telescope with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution. This black hole resides 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6.5-billion times that of the Sun. This breakthrough was announced today in a series of six papers published in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The image reveals the black hole at the center of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. Today, in coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers reveal that they have succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) - a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration - was designed to capture images of a black hole. The NRAO Jansky fellow at MIT Haystack Observatory who developed new imaging techniques for the EHT and led international efforts to create the first images of the supermassive black hole in M87 as a coordinator of the imaging group. The full EHT story, including background on black holes and supporting materials can be found at the National Science Foundation’s special section: “Exploring Black Holes.” The EHT is a turbo-powered version of that pioneering telescope. This is just the latest step in a journey that began nearly 50 years ago with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s (NRAO) Green Bank Interferometer: the first telescope to identify and locate the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. These observations will help scientists understand how the universe behaves under conditions of extreme gravity, forces so strong that they warp the fabric of space and time. A microarcseconds is about the size of the period at the end of this sentence if you were looking from the Moon. With ALMA, the EHT achieved one of the highest resolutions ever in astronomy, 20 microarcseconds. in Chile was instrumental in making this observation possible. The telescope is an array of 66 high-precision dish antennas in northern Chile. National Science Foundation and its international partners (NRAO/ESO/NAOJ), ALMA is among the most complex and powerful astronomical observatories on Earth or in space. The newly released image reveals a glowing ring-like structure with a dark central region - a feature known as the “shadow” of a black hole.Īs the most sensitive and largest element of the EHT, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)Funded by the U.S. This unprecedented observation was made possible by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), an array of eight individual radio telescopes spread over four continents and linked together to form a new, exceptionally powerful telescope. ![]() ![]() One light year is equivalent to about six trillion miles. 55 million light-years Light-yearsThe distance that light travels in one year in a vacuum. at the center of Messier 87 (M87), a giant elliptical galaxy Elliptical GalaxyA galaxy that appears round or elliptical in shape, typically containing little gas and dust, no spiral arms or disk, mostly older stars, which range in shape from spherical to "football" shaped, and few hot, bright stars. These large black holes lurk at the centers of most galaxies. How a Telescope Made Mostly of Nothing Became Astronomy’s ‘Killer App’Īstronomers have captured the first direct visual evidence of a black hole Black HoleAn object – typically a collapsed star – whose gravity is so strong that its escape velocity exceeds the speed of light.: an image of the supermassive black hole Supermassive Black HoleA black hole that has a million or as much as a billion solar masses. ![]()
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