On the right is Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the black hole at the center of our Milky Way. On the left is M87*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87), 55 million light-years away. These panels show the first two images ever taken of black holes. Moreover, Europe contributed with funding to the EHT consortium project through grants by the European Research Council and by the Max Planck Society in Germany. ![]() ![]() Europe also contributes to the EHT observations with other radio observatories - the IRAM 30-meter telescope in Spain and, since 2018, the NOrthern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA) in France - as well as a supercomputer to combine EHT data hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany. In addition to other facilities, the EHT network of radio observatories includes the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array ( ALMA) and the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) in the Atacama Desert in Chile, co-owned and co-operated by ESO on behalf of its member states in Europe. The EHT observed Sgr A* on multiple nights in 2017, collecting data for many hours in a row, similar to using a long exposure time on a camera. To image it, the team created the powerful EHT, which linked together eight existing radio observatories across the planet to form a single “Earth-sized” virtual telescope. Credit: ESOīecause the black hole is about 27,000 light-years away from Earth, it appears to us to have about the same size in the sky as a doughnut on the Moon. What does it take to capture an image of the black hole at the center of our galaxy? This video explains how the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) works, and how astronomers managed to create one massive Earth-sized telescope big enough to “see” at the edge of black holes. “These unprecedented observations have greatly improved our understanding of what happens at the very center of our galaxy, and offer new insights on how these giant black holes interact with their surroundings.” The EHT team’s results are being published today (May 12, 2022) in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. “We were stunned by how well the size of the ring agreed with predictions from Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity,” said EHT Project Scientist Geoffrey Bower from the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, Taipei. Minniti DSS, Nogueras-Lara et al., Schoedel, NACO, GRAVITY Collaboration, EHT Collaboration (Music: Azul Cobalto) ![]() The black hole is shown by a dark central region called a shadow, surrounded by a ring of luminous gas and dust. Finally, we arrive at Sgr A*, the first image of which has been captured by the EHT collaboration. The stars here have been observed with ESO’s Very Large Telescope and ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer for decades, the black hole’s immense gravitational pull distorting the orbits of the stars closest to it. Beginning with a broad view of the Milky Way, we dive into the dense clouds of gas and dust at our galactic center. Watch as this video sequence zooms into the black hole (Sgr A*) at the center of our galaxy. ![]() The new view captures light bent by the powerful gravity of the black hole, which is four million times more massive than our Sun. Located in the Atacama Desert in Chile, ALMA is the most sensitive of all the observatories in the EHT array, and ESO is a co-owner of ALMA on behalf of its European Member States.Ĭredit: ESO/José Francisco Salgado (), EHT CollaborationĪlthough we cannot see the black hole itself, because it is completely dark, glowing gas around it reveals a telltale signature: a dark central region (called a shadow) surrounded by a bright ring-like structure. Highlighted in the box is the image of Sagittarius A* taken by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration. This image shows the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) looking up at the Milky Way as well as the location of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at our galactic center.
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