Event Horizon Telescope Black Hole Success

Astronomers unveils the world’s first ever picture of a black hole taken by the Event Horizon Telescope.

22:16 15 April 2019

Astronomers have revealed the world’s first ever picture of a black hole earlier today (April 10, 2pm UK time). Taken by the Event Horizon Telescope, the picture was unveiled by scientists who held conferences in Lyngby in Denmark, Tokyo in Japan, Washington DC in the US, Brussels in Belgium, Shanghai in China, Taipei in Taiwan and Santiago in Spain. They presented a silhouette of the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy.

 

 

The conference, which was live-streamed online, involved members of the European Research Council, Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, and the European Southern Observatory. In the US, the live stream was joined by Sera Markoff from the University of Amsterdam and Sheperd Doeleman, a senior research fellow from Harvard University.

 

 

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory in the US explained: “Though astronomers have long studied the impact of black holes on the universe, no one has ever imaged the actual point of no return, where matter and energy cannot escape a black hole — the so-called event horizon.

 

 

“By combining the collecting area of ALMA and other millimetre-wavelength telescopes scattered across the globe, the EHT may finally achieve that goal.”