prix57 Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 https://eventhorizontelescope.org/ Scientists have obtained the first image of a black hole, using Event Horizon Telescope observations of the center of the galaxy M87. The image shows a bright ring formed as light bends in the intense gravity around a black hole that is 6.5 billion times more massive than the Sun. This long-sought image provides the strongest evidence to date for the existence of supermassive black holes and opens a new window onto the study of black holes, their event horizons, and gravity. Credit: Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration Astronomers Capture First Image of a Black Hole An international collaboration presents paradigm-shifting observations of the gargantuan black hole at the heart of distant galaxy Messier 87 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 center 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 Earth-sized virtual telescope with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution [3]. 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 relativity during the centennial year of the historic experiment that first confirmed the theory [4]. "We have taken the first picture of a black hole," said EHT project director Sheperd S. Doeleman of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. "This is an extraordinary scientific feat accomplished by a team of more than 200 researchers." Black holes are extraordinary cosmic objects with enormous masses but extremely compact sizes. The presence of these objects affects their environment in extreme ways, warping spacetime and super-heating any surrounding material. "If immersed in a bright region, like a disc of glowing gas, we expect a black hole to create a dark region similar to a shadow — something predicted by Einstein’s general relativity that we’ve never seen before, explained chair of the EHT Science Council Heino Falcke of Radboud University, the Netherlands. "This shadow, caused by the gravitational bending and capture of light by the event horizon, reveals a lot about the nature of these fascinating objects and allowed us to measure the enormous mass of M87’s black hole." Multiple calibration and imaging methods have revealed a ring-like structure with a dark central region — the black hole’s shadow — that persisted over multiple independent EHT observations. "Once we were sure we had imaged the shadow, we could compare our observations to extensive computer models that include the physics of warped space, superheated matter and strong magnetic fields. Many of the features of the observed image match our theoretical understanding surprisingly well," remarks Paul T.P. Ho, EHT Board member and Director of the East Asian Observatory [5]. "This makes us confident about the interpretation of our observations, including our estimation of the black hole’s mass." Creating the EHT was a formidable challenge which required upgrading and connecting a worldwide network of eight pre-existing telescopes deployed at a variety of challenging high-altitude sites. These locations included volcanoes in Hawai`i and Mexico, mountains in Arizona and the Spanish Sierra Nevada, the Chilean Atacama Desert, and Antarctica. The EHT observations use a technique called very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) which synchronises telescope facilities around the world and exploits the rotation of our planet to form one huge, Earth-size telescope observing at a wavelength of 1.3 mm. VLBI allows the EHT to achieve an angular resolution of 20 micro-arcseconds — enough to read a newspaper in New York from a sidewalk café in Paris [6]. The telescopes contributing to this result were ALMA, APEX, the IRAM 30-meter telescope, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, the Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano, the Submillimeter Array, the Submillimeter Telescope, and the South Pole Telescope [7]. Petabytes of raw data from the telescopes were combined by highly specialised supercomputers hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomyand MIT Haystack Observatory. The construction of the EHT and the observations announced today represent the culmination of decades of observational, technical, and theoretical work. This example of global teamwork required close collaboration by researchers from around the world. Thirteen partner institutions worked together to create the EHT, using both pre-existing infrastructure and support from a variety of agencies. Key funding was provided by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), the EU's European Research Council (ERC), and funding agencies in East Asia. "We have achieved something presumed to be impossible just a generation ago," concluded Doeleman. "Breakthroughs in technology, connections between the world's best radio observatories, and innovative algorithms all came together to open an entirely new window on black holes and the event horizon." Notes [1] The shadow of a black hole is the closest we can come to an image of the black hole itself, a completely dark object from which light cannot escape. The black hole’s boundary — the event horizon from which the EHT takes its name — is around 2.5 times smaller than the shadow it casts and measures just under 40 billion km across. [2] Supermassive black holes are relatively tiny astronomical objects — which has made them impossible to directly observe until now. As a black hole’s size is proportional to its mass, the more massive a black hole, the larger the shadow. Thanks to its enormous mass and relative proximity, M87’s black hole was predicted to be one of the largest viewable from Earth — making it a perfect target for the EHT. [3] Although the telescopes are not physically connected, they are able to synchronize their recorded data with atomic clocks — hydrogen masers — which precisely time their observations. These observations were collected at a wavelength of 1.3 mm during a 2017 global campaign. Each telescope of the EHT produced enormous amounts of data — roughly 350 terabytes per day — which was stored on high-performance helium-filled hard drives. These data were flown to highly specialised supercomputers — known as correlators — at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and MIT Haystack Observatory to be combined. They were then painstakingly converted into an image using novel computational tools developed by the collaboration. [4] 100 years ago, two expeditions set out for the island of Príncipe off the coast of Africa and Sobra in Brazil to observe the 1919 solar eclipse, with the goal of testing general relativity by seeing if starlight would be bent around the limb of the sun, as predicted by Einstein. In an echo of those observations, the EHT has sent team members to some of the world's highest and isolated radio facilities to once again test our understanding of gravity. [5] The East Asian Observatory (EAO) partner on the EHT project represents the participation of many regions in Asia, including China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, India and Indonesia. [6] Future EHT observations will see substantially increased sensitivity with the participation of the IRAM NOEMA Observatory, the Greenland Telescope and the Kitt Peak Telescope. [7] ALMA is a partnership of the European Southern Observatory (ESO; Europe, representing its member states), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan, together with the National Research Council (Canada), the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST; Taiwan), Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA; Taiwan), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI; Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. APEX is operated by ESO, the 30-meter telescope is operated by IRAM (the IRAM Partner Organizations are MPG (Germany), CNRS (France) and IGN (Spain)), the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope is operated by the EAO, the Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano is operated by INAOE and UMass, the Submillimeter Array is operated by SAO and ASIAA and the Submillimeter Telescope is operated by the Arizona Radio Observatory (ARO). The South Pole Telescope is operated by the University of Chicago with specialized EHT instrumentation provided by the University of Arizona. More Information This research was presented in a series of six papers published today in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters, along with a Focus Issue that summarizes the published studies. Press release images in higher resolution (4000x2330 pixels) can be found here in PNG (16-bit), and JPG (8-bit) format. The highest-quality image (7416x4320 pixels, TIF, 16-bit, 180 Mb) can be obtained from repositories of our partners, NSF and ESO. A summary of latest press and media resources can be found on this page. The EHT collaboration involves more than 200 researchers from Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America. The international collaboration is working to capture the most detailed black hole images ever by creating a virtual Earth-sized telescope. Supported by considerable international investment, the EHT links existing telescopes using novel systems — creating a fundamentally new instrument with the highest angular resolving power that has yet been achieved. The individual telescopes involved are; ALMA, APEX, the IRAM 30-meter Telescope, the IRAM NOEMA Observatory, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), the Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano (LMT), the Submillimeter Array (SMA), the Submillimeter Telescope (SMT), the South Pole Telescope (SPT), the Kitt Peak Telescope, and the Greenland Telescope (GLT). The EHT collaboration consists of 13 stakeholder institutes; the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, the University of Arizona, the University of Chicago, the East Asian Observatory, Goethe-Universitaet Frankfurt, Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique, Large Millimeter Telescope, Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, MIT Haystack Observatory, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Radboud University and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Contact Information Sheperd S. Doeleman EHT Collaboration Director Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 E-mail: sdoeleman@cfa.harvard.edu Phone: +1-617-496-7762 Peter D. Edmonds Public Information Officer Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 E-mail: pedmonds@cfa.harvard.edu Phone: +1-617-571-7279 EHT Outreach Working Group E-mail: ehtelescope@gmail.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prix57 Posted April 10, 2019 Author Share Posted April 10, 2019 I have been waiting a very long time for this. Just incredible! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhillipBlunt Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 3 minutes ago, prix57 said: measures just under 40 billion km across Man alive! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DADDYROCK Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 Oh, I was expecting a picture of DONALD TRUMPS MOUTH. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Borvat Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 Actually if you look closely near the center of this image you can see an actual functional black hole. Despite its invisible interior, the presence of a black hole can be inferred through its interaction with factual matter. The idea of a hole so massive that even light or truth could not escape was briefly proposed by astronomical pioneer and English clergyman John Michell in a letter published in November 1784. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mackcanuck Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tortorella's Rant Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 6.5 billion times more massive than the sun? It's almost as big as your mom. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhillipBlunt Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 3 minutes ago, Tortorella's Rant said: 6.5 billion times more massive than the sun? It's almost as big as your mom. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Angry Goose Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 The hell dimension on the other side of it is what scares me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tre Mac Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 That's just a cigarette lighter inside a dark car. /fake Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Generational.EP40 Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 It’s what astronomers have known for years and decades now. Nice to have an actual photo tho! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peaches5 Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 A giant Pokeball a giant Pikachu is going to come out of that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
canuckledraggin Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 That's right on the heels of the image from the Hubble telescope that I saw a few days ago. http://hubblesite.org/image/68/gallery Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhillipBlunt Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 16 minutes ago, SILLY GOOSE said: The hell dimension on the other side of it is what scares me Same here. That and the sheer immensity of it, and it's ability to swallow light. What waits on the other side....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pluralsight Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 57 minutes ago, prix57 said: Astronomers Capture First Image of a Black Hole An international collaboration presents paradigm-shifting observations of the gargantuan black hole at the heart of distant galaxy Messier 87 &^@# Mark Messier Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhillipBlunt Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 5 minutes ago, canuckledraggin said: That's right on the heels of the image from the Hubble telescope that I saw a few days ago. The universe is both a wondrous and ominous place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bishopshodan Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 *moved this over to the correct thread..... Watched this last night in prep for the announcement. Just awesome. Brian Greene hosts Andrea Ghez ( studying the closest stars to the super massive black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy, using infrared light) and Shep Doeleman ( Event Horizon Telescope, the ones that released this image, studying black holes using radio waves) I found this very informative. Highly recommend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xereau Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 Disappointed that there isn't a single Oilers joke in here. The black hole of the NHL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReggieBush Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 It was nice knowing you all. We will be sucked in before the Canucks win the Cup (or draft lottery for that matter) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhillipBlunt Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 4 minutes ago, ReggieBush said: It was nice knowing you all. We will be sucked in before the Canucks win the Cup (or draft lottery for that matter) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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