A gallery of images of the historic project to create the first image of a black hole, or more precisely, of the shadow created by the sphere of a black hole’s horizon.
The gigantic black hole in galaxy Messier 87 (M87) is the size of our solar system. The M87 black hole is actively creating a lengthy jet and emitting a radio wave signal that we are detecting some 55 million light years away.
In order to image this huge distant object, scientists created a virtual earth-sized telescope by combining signals from an array of 7 telescopes across the glove, and using the Earth’s rotation to scan the black hole.
5 PetaBytes of data was collected and processed to create the historic final 4K image: a fuzzy smile from a massive invisible black hole 55 million light years away.
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Watch on YouTube: bit.ly/BlackHoleImagePressConference
video of very informative NSF press conference
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