![]() ![]() Based on statistical studies, there should be other black holes that are enormous enough and not too distant for the EHT to resolve, but researchers haven’t found them yet.The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) - a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration - was designed to capture images of a black hole. Work is ongoing to spot other supermassive black holes the researchers could observe and compare to these two. So far, these two black holes are the only ones we know of that can be imaged by EHT with high enough resolution to see their silhouettes against the light of the hot plasma around them – Sgr A* because of its proximity to Earth, and M87* because of its colossal size. These will collect data in multiple wavelengths, which will increase the resolution of the images and could produce colour pictures – the images that have been released up to now have had colour added to indicate brightness. ![]() The additional telescopes recently added to the array should help with that. Although they do have some data they could use, there currently isn’t enough to make movies of the black holes, she said. “We tried to use the data that we got to try to recover a movie,” said EHT researcher Katie Bouman at the California Institute of Technology during the press event. “We don’t see a crack in that theory yet.”įinally, another major goal of the EHT collaboration is to make videos of Sgr A* and M87* as the material around them moves and changes over time. ![]() “It should give us a hint, at some point, of maybe something different than how we formulate gravity with the theory of general relativity right now,” said Özel. While the images are consistent with Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity so far, deeper analysis may give us another check on how that theory might break down in the extreme areas around black holes. Read more: Milky Way’s black hole has got 75 times brighter and we don’t know why ![]() It will probably take years before the results of that analysis are released, she said. We have taken data in 2018 with one additional telescope, 2022 with three additional telescopes, and we are working very, very hard to get that to you… as soon as we possibly can, but I can’t make any promises about when,” said EHT researcher Lia Medeiros at the Institute for Advanced Study in New Jersey during a 12 May press event. The images of Sgr A* and M87* were both assembled from data gathered in 2017, but there have since been two more observation periods, with extra telescopes added to the collaboration’s original network of eight. So, what is next?įirst, the researchers will have to examine the data they have already collected. Now that it has taken images of both that black hole, called Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), and the one at the centre of the M87 galaxy, known as M87*, it is time for the collaboration behind the images to move on to new scientific pursuits. On 12 May, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) revealed the first close-up picture of the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. The image of the Milky’s Way’s black hole, Sagittarius A*, with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in the foregroundĮSO/Jos? Francisco Salgado (), EHT Collaboration ![]()
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