Black hole
The image we see at the top here seems a little blurred at first glance. And yet this very picture made it onto the title pages of papers all over the world in spring 2019. That’s because it’s the first ever photo of a black hole.
To take a picture like this, an individual telescope would need to be of a size equivalent to the diameter of the Earth. Since that doesn’t exist, scientists formed a cooperative project called the Event Horizon Telescope in 2017, in which they set up eight radio telescopes at locations all over the hemisphere to form one huge virtual telescope. The telescopes involved included the APEX Telescope in Chile, the IRAM Telescope in Spain and the telescope at the Amundsen-Scott Station at the South Pole. The measurements were synchronised with nanosecond precision using atomic clocks
© EHT Collaboration, Johnson / APEX, IRAM, G. Narayanan, J. McMahon, JCMT/JAC, S. Hostler, D. Harvey, ESO/C. Malin
The volumes of data gathered during the measurements were immense! They were stored on a large number of hard disks and transported by post. That was the fastest way. It would have taken much longer to transmit all that data via the internet.
The data were analysed using the supercomputers at the MPI for Radio Astronomy in Bonn and the Haystack Observatory at the MIT in Boston.
© MPI for Radio Astronomy, Bonn
After almost two years of calculating and evaluating, researchers were able to present the first image of a black hole in April 2019.
© EHT Collaboration
It shows the supermassive black hole at the centre of M87, a supergiant elliptical galaxy in the Virgo cluster. It’s “only” 55 million light years away from Earth and therefore in astronomical terms quite nearby.
To take a picture like this, an individual telescope would need to be of a size equivalent to the diameter of the Earth. Since that doesn’t exist, scientists formed a cooperative project called the Event Horizon Telescope in 2017, in which they set up eight radio telescopes at locations all over the hemisphere to form one huge virtual telescope. The telescopes involved included the APEX Telescope in Chile, the IRAM Telescope in Spain and the telescope at the Amundsen-Scott Station at the South Pole. The measurements were synchronised with nanosecond precision using atomic clocks
The volumes of data gathered during the measurements were immense! They were stored on a large number of hard disks and transported by post. That was the fastest way. It would have taken much longer to transmit all that data via the internet.
The data were analysed using the supercomputers at the MPI for Radio Astronomy in Bonn and the Haystack Observatory at the MIT in Boston.
After almost two years of calculating and evaluating, researchers were able to present the first image of a black hole in April 2019.
It shows the supermassive black hole at the centre of M87, a supergiant elliptical galaxy in the Virgo cluster. It’s “only” 55 million light years away from Earth and therefore in astronomical terms quite nearby.
Cooperation partners
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