First image of a black hole (EHT)
Primera imagen de un agujero negro (M87*, EHT)
- Date
- 2019 · confidence high
- Place
- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
- Credited to
- Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (Shep Doeleman, Katie Bouman, Heino Falcke)
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
A worldwide network of synchronised radio telescopes formed an Earth-sized telescope and obtained the shadow of M87's black hole, of 6.5 billion solar masses; in 2022 it did the same with Sagittarius A*.
Data from ALMA, SMA, IRAM, LMT, SPT, JCMT, SMT and APEX; processed at Haystack (MIT) and Bonn (MPIfR).
What it led to
- Visual proof of event horizons
- Tests of general relativity in the strong-field regime
- Next-generation EHT
Built on
Made possible
- Very-long-baseline interferometry at 1.3 mm
- Image reconstruction algorithms