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EU-funded astronomical discovery: First photo of a black hole
EU-funded scientists have contributed to a major astronomical discovery: the capturing of the first ever image of a black hole. The discovery is the result of an international science collaboration called Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) that linked several observatories across the globe and some 200 researchers in Europe, the US and East Asia. A grant from the European Research Council allowed three European scientists to play a key role in this discovery: Professors Heino Falcke, Professor of Astroparticle Physics and Radio Astronomy at the Radboud University Nijmegen, Luciano Rezzolla, Director at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITP) of the Goethe University of Frankfurt, Michael Kramer, Director at the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) in Bonn. Additional EU funding under Horizon 2020 provided long-term support for this and other projects. © Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration. Licensed under CC-BY
First Image of a Black HoleThe 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. In coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers revealed that they succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow. The shadow of a black hole seen here is the closest we can come to an image of the black hole itself, a completely dark object from which light cannot escape. The black hole’s boundary — the event horizon from which the EHT takes its name — is around 2.5 times smaller than the shadow it casts and measures just under 40 billion km across. While this may sound large, this ring is only about 40 microarcseconds across — equivalent to measuring the length of a credit card on the surface of the Moon. Although the telescopes making up the EHT are not physically connected, they are able to synchronize their recorded data with atomic clocks — hydrogen masers — which precisely time their observations. These observations were collected at a wavelength of 1.3 mm during a 2017 global campaign. Each telescope of the EHT produced enormous amounts of data – roughly 350 terabytes per day – which was stored on high-performance helium-filled hard drives. These data were flown to highly specialised supercomputers — known as correlators — at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and MIT Haystack Observatory to be combined. They were then painstakingly converted into an image using novel computational tools developed by the collaboration. © Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration. Licensed under CC-BY
Parabola of the radio telescope of the Effelsberg radio observatory
Parabola of the radio telescope of the Effelsberg radio observatory
Parabola of the radio telescope of the Effelsberg radio observatory
Parabola of the radio telescope of the Effelsberg radio observatory
Parabola of the radio telescope of the Effelsberg radio observatory
Parabola of the radio telescope of the Effelsberg radio observatory
Parabola of the radio telescope of the Effelsberg radio observatory
Parabola of the radio telescope of the Effelsberg radio observatory
Parabola of the radio telescope of the Effelsberg radio observatory
Parabola of the radio telescope of the Effelsberg radio observatory
Parabola of the radio telescope of the Effelsberg radio observatory
Parabola of the radio telescope of the Effelsberg radio observatory
From left to right: Michael Kramer, Director at the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) in Bonn, Luciano Rezzolla, Director at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITP) of the Goethe University of Frankfurt, and Heino Falcke, Professor of Astroparticle Physics and Radio Astronomy at the Radboud University Nijmegen
From left to right: Michael Kramer, Director at the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) in Bonn, Luciano Rezzolla, Director at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITP) of the Goethe University of Frankfurt, and Heino Falcke, Professor of Astroparticle Physics and Radio Astronomy at the Radboud University Nijmegen
Parabola of the radio telescope of the Effelsberg radio observatory
From left to right: Michael Kramer, Director at the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) in Bonn, Luciano Rezzolla, Director at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITP) of the Goethe University of Frankfurt, and Heino Falcke, Professor of Astroparticle Physics and Radio Astronomy at the Radboud University Nijmegen
Heino Falcke, Professor of Astroparticle Physics and Radio Astronomy at the Radboud University Nijmegen
Heino Falcke, Professor of Astroparticle Physics and Radio Astronomy at the Radboud University Nijmegen
Heino Falcke, Professor of Astroparticle Physics and Radio Astronomy at the Radboud University Nijmegen
Heino Falcke, Professor of Astroparticle Physics and Radio Astronomy at the Radboud University Nijmegen
Luciano Rezzolla, Director at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITP) of the Goethe University of Frankfurt
Parabola of the radio telescope of the Effelsberg radio observatory
Luciano Rezzolla, Director at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITP) of the Goethe University of Frankfurt
Luciano Rezzolla, Director at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITP) of the Goethe University of Frankfurt
Michael Kramer, Director at the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) in Bonn
Michael Kramer, Director at the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) in Bonn
Michael Kramer, Director at the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) in Bonn
From left to right: Michael Kramer, Director at the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) in Bonn, Luciano Rezzolla, Director at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITP) of the Goethe University of Frankfurt, and Heino Falcke, Professor of Astroparticle Physics and Radio Astronomy at the Radboud University Nijmegen
From left to right: Michael Kramer, Director at the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) in Bonn, Luciano Rezzolla, Director at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITP) of the Goethe University of Frankfurt, and Heino Falcke, Professor of Astroparticle Physics and Radio Astronomy at the Radboud University Nijmegen
From left to right: Michael Kramer, Director at the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) in Bonn, Luciano Rezzolla, Director at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITP) of the Goethe University of Frankfurt, and Heino Falcke, Professor of Astroparticle Physics and Radio Astronomy at the Radboud University Nijmegen
From left to right: Michael Kramer, Director at the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) in Bonn, Heino Falcke, Professor of Astroparticle Physics and Radio Astronomy at the Radboud University Nijmegen, and Luciano Rezzolla, Director at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITP) of the Goethe University of Frankfurt
From left to right: Michael Kramer, Director at the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) in Bonn, Heino Falcke, Professor of Astroparticle Physics and Radio Astronomy at the Radboud University Nijmegen, and Luciano Rezzolla, Director at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITP) of the Goethe University of Frankfurt
Radio telescope control room at the Effelsberg Radio Observatory
Radio telescope control room at the Effelsberg Radio Observatory
Parabola of the radio telescope of the Effelsberg radio observatory
Radio telescope control room at the Effelsberg Radio Observatory
Radio telescope control room at the Effelsberg Radio Observatory
Radio telescope control room at the Effelsberg Radio Observatory
Radio telescope control room at the Effelsberg Radio Observatory
Radio telescope control room at the Effelsberg Radio Observatory
Simulation of a black hole on the screen
Simulation of a black hole on the screen
Simulation of a black hole on the screen
Simulation of a black hole on the screen
From left to right: Heino Falcke, Professor of Astroparticle Physics and Radio Astronomy at the Radboud University Nijmegen, Michael Kramer, Director at the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) in Bonn, and Luciano Rezzolla, Director at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITP) of the Goethe University of Frankfurt, and simulation of a black hole on the screen
Parabola of the radio telescope of the Effelsberg radio observatory
Simulation of a black hole on the screen
Parabola of the radio telescope of the Effelsberg radio observatory
Parabola of the radio telescope of the Effelsberg radio observatory
Parabola of the radio telescope of the Effelsberg radio observatory
The IRAM 30-meter Telescope at Pico Veleta in the Spanish Sierra Nevada. The observatory is the most sensitive single telescope of the EHT array
The IRAM 30-meter Telescope at Pico Veleta in the Spanish Sierra Nevada. The observatory is the most sensitive single telescope of the EHT array
The IRAM 30-meter Telescope at Pico Veleta in the Spanish Sierra Nevada. The observatory is the most sensitive single telescope of the EHT array
The NOEMA Observatory in the Plateau de Bure, French Alps, is the most powerful telescope of its kind in the Northern Hemisphere. It joined the EHT array in late 2018. With its high-precision antennas NOEMA will give the EHT a sensitivity and spatial resolution which have never been obtained before
The NOEMA Observatory in the Plateau de Bure, French Alps, is the most powerful telescope of its kind in the Northern Hemisphere. It joined the EHT array in late 2018. With its high-precision antennas NOEMA will give the EHT a sensitivity and spatial resolution which have never been obtained before
The Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope looks skyward during a bright, moonlit night on Chajnantor, one of the highest and driest observatory sites in the world. Astronomical treasures fill the sky above the telescope, a testament to the excellent conditions offered by this site in Chile’s Atacama region
What is the black hole shadow around a supermassive black hole expected to look like? The images is obtained by performing general-relativistic ray-tracing and radiative transport calculations
The image shows a large-scale view of a general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD) simulation of the flow accreting onto a rotating black hole. An initially stable torus of plasma orbiting around a black hole is perturbed with a weak magnetic field (the density of the plasma is shown in red). The magnetic field rapidly drives a turbulent flow that produces accretion onto the black hole
Still image from a scientific virtual reality simulation: the viewer flies towards the event horizon of the accreting black hole in M 87. The simulation includes all kinds of plasma physics and light transport in curved spacetimes. You approach the black hole from faraway, and dive towards the event horizon from a high altitude. The light you see is emitted at multiple radio frequencies ranging from 6 GHz (gray) to 230 GHz (yellow/white)
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