Event Horizon Telescope (EHT)

mahdavi3d

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Event Horizon Telescope

A long standing goal in astrophysics is to directly observe the immediate environment of a black hole with angular resolution comparable to the event horizon.

Realizing this goal would open a new window on the study of general relativity in the strong field regime, accretion and outflow processes at the edge of a black hole, the existence of an event horizon, and fundamental black hole physics. Steady long-term progress on improving the capability of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) at short wavelengths has now made it extremely likely that this goal will be achieved within the next decade.


Key science objectives

Testing general relativity - Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that there will be a roughly circular "shadow" around a black hole. The EHT aims to image the shadow to test this prediction and determine the mass of black holes

Understanding accretion around a black hole - Black holes exert a strong gravitational pull on nearby matter. Some of this matter ultimately falls into the black hole in a process called accretion. One of the objectives of the EHT is to improve our understanding of the physics of accretion.

Understanding jet genesis and collimation - Most galaxies show large scale jets of very fast moving plasma that are launched from the central black hole. One possibility is that these jets are launched very close to the rapidly-rotating central black hole. Most of these jets remain tightly confined to a narrow opening angle even far from the black hole. The EHT will improve our understanding of the process of generation and collimation of these jets.

sources:
http://www.eventhorizontelescope.org/
http://www.eventhorizontelescope.org/science/index.html



[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B0v2XypLqY"]The Event Horizon Telescope: Imaging and Time-Resolving a Black Hole - YouTube[/ame]​
 
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-OyMPAq2PU"]How Do You Observe a Black Hole? The Event Horizon Telescope on the Verge of a Breakthrough - YouTube[/ame]​
 
There is also a German language livestream scheduled by the German webcast "Lesch & Co", presented by Harald Lesch (Professor of astronomy at the LMU in Munich since 1995), it will start at about 16:00 local time, after the official event.



---------- Post added at 15:14 ---------- Previous post was at 15:12 ----------

And its the first image of a black hole, just a few minutes old:

 
A bit off-topic, but I couldn't help it: [ame="https://twitter.com/MichaelGalanin/status/1116143798025883648"]https://twitter.com/MichaelGalanin/status/1116143798025883648[/ame]

:P
 
Interesting, I had expected that the first image would be Sagittarius A*, but they ended up doing M87* because that's a brighter source.
 
For some size comparison: That is a huge black hole:

m87_black_hole_size_comparison.png
 
Worth mentioning that the jet associated with M87's supermassive black hole can be imaged even with amateur telescope equipment. I took this image of it last night with my 8" LX200 classic, SBIG ST-2000XCM and AO-7 adaptive optics, stacking 1 hour and 5 minutes with 5 minute sub-exposures:
32722431547_5ed47987e9_o.jpg
 
Event Horizon Telescope: Black hole produces twisting jet.

One year on from publishing the first ever image of a black hole, the team behind that historic breakthrough is back with a new picture.
This time we're being shown the base of a colossal jet of excited gas, or plasma, screaming away from another black hole at near light-speed.
The scene was actually in the "background" of the original target.
The scientists who operate the Event Horizon Telescope describe the jet in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52204614
 
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