Category: cosmology – Page 420
Astronomers Capture First Image of a Black Hole
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. 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.
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 centre of Messier 87 [1], a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole resides 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun [2].
The EHT links telescopes around the globe to form an unprecedented Earth-sized virtual telescope [3]. The EHT offers scientists a new way to study the most extreme objects in the Universe predicted by Einstein’s general relativity during the centenary year of the historic experiment that first confirmed the theory [4].
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Media Advisory: Press Conference on First Result from the Event Horizon Telescope
Tomorrow (April 10) at 3pm CEST (9am Eastern Time) the first results from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) will be announced:
The scientific mission of the EHT is to capture an image of a black hole horizon. So far, we have indirect evidence for the existence of a black hole horizon, but have not actually “seen” one.
ESO, european organisation for astronomical research in the southern hemisphere.
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Scientists set to unveil first picture of a black hole
The world, it seems, is soon to see the first picture of a black hole.
On Wednesday, astronomers across the globe will hold “six major press conferences” simultaneously to announce the first results of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), which was designed precisely for that purpose.
It has been a long wait.
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