Today history was made as a black hole was captured in high definition by about 8 telescopes located at 6 observatory centers around the world, all acting as one big telescope.
What are Blackholes?
Black holes are invisible by nature. Their pull is inescapable, forever trapping any light that falls into their gravitational abyss. But just beyond a black hole’s point of no return, light persists, and its patterns, like a photo negative, can reveal a black hole’s lurking presence.
Now an international team of astronomers, including researchers at MIT’s Haystack Observatory, has captured the light around our own supermassive black hole, revealing for the first time, an image of Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*, pronounced ‘sadge-ay-star’), the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy.
The image was created by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) — a global network of radio telescopes whose movements are choreographed so they function as one virtual, planet-sized telescope. The researchers focused the EHT array on the center of our galaxy, 27,000 light years from Earth, cutting through our planet’s atmosphere and the turbulent plasma beyond our solar system.
The resulting image reveals Sgr A* for the first time, in the form of a glowing, donut-shaped ring of light. This ring structure lies just outside the event horizon, or the point beyond which light cannot escape, and is the result of light being bent by the black hole’s enormous gravity. The bright ring encircles a dark center, described as the black hole’s “shadow.”
The ring’s white-hot plasma is estimated to be 10 billion Kelvin, or 18 billion degrees Fahrenheit. Judging from the ring’s dimensions, Sgr A* is roughly 4 million times the mass of the sun and incredibly compact, with a size that could fit within the orbit of Venus.
The image is the first visual confirmation that a black hole indeed exists at the center of our galaxy. Astronomers previously have observed stars circling around an invisible, massive, and extremely dense object — all signs pointing to a supermassive black hole. The image revealed today provides the first visual evidence that the object is a black hole, with dimensions that agree with predictions based on Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
First Massive Black Hole Captured in High definition by 8 Telescopes globally, Image of the Sagittarius Captured in HD,