My daughter and i are waiting excitedly, this should be cool!

National Science Foundation Event Horizon Telescope stream

National AstronomicalObservatory of Japan Stream

Some more info.

Tomorrow (right now!) six simultaneous press conferences around the world will broadcast the first results from the Event Horizon Telescope- a project that was designed to take the first ever image of a black hole. The announcement was described as 'groundbreaking' - so it's very likely the very first photograph of a black hole will be revealed to the world tomorrow!

We've never seen a black hole before- all the pictures you've ever seen are artist's impressions! By imaging a supermassive black hole scientists are hoping to test whether Einstein's theories are correct even at the most extreme place in the universe.


The EHT is not one single telescope, rather it is an international collaboration linking dozens of radio telescopes around the world. You'd need a gigantic dish in order to resolve an object as small as a black hole from half way across the galaxy; but by working together, using an array of telescopes from Europe, North and South America and even Antarctica, they can effectively make a telescope the size of the Earth - greatly increasing the power.

The event horizon- the zone beyond which nothing can escape- does indeed reflect or emit no light, so you cannot image it directly. However black holes are surrounded by a lot of very bright material- the ripped up remains of stars and gas clouds orbiting the black hole in a ring called an accretion disk. The extreme bending of light that happens near the black hole means the light emitted from this plasma-hot ring leaves a 'silhouette' of the event horizon- this is what the Event Horizon Telescope hopes to image.


Last edited by Ajay; 04/10/19 12:44 PM.

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