Four years ago, scientists captured the first image of a supermassive black hole in the Messier 87 galaxy.
More examples are coming, and now it’s time to consider how it is done.
The first thing to note is that none of these images are actually of a black hole.
They’re all of accretion disks, which can be hard to see due to their luminosity.
Also, the black hole in M87 is way, way far away.
Instead, astronomers got eight radio telescopes scattered across the planet to work together in The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) .
Interferometry allows scientists to create images of objects that otherwise would be too small to see with conventional telescopes.
Finally, the distance between the telescopes provides a baseline that makes higher resolution possible. .
Advertisement AdvertisementYour brain has a few hundred million years of evolution behind it, when it comes to adding the images produced by both eyes together.
Each observation was timestamped to the nanosecond
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