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First Image of Supermassive Black Hole M87. Credit: Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration.

Focus on the First Event Horizon Telescope Results

April 10, 2019

Focus on the First Event Horizon Telescope Results

Shep Doeleman (EHT Director) on behalf of the EHT Collaboration

April 2019

 

We report the first image of a black hole.

This Focus Issue shows ultra-high angular resolution images of radio emission from the supermassive black hole believed to lie at the heart of galaxy M87 (Figure 1). A defining feature of the images is an irregular but clear bright ring, whose size and shape agree closely with the expected lensed photon orbit of a 6.5 billion solar mass black hole. Soon after...

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First Image of Supermassive Black Hole M87. Credit: Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration.

Astronomers Capture First Image of a Black Hole: An international collaboration presents paradigm-shifting observations of the gargantuan black hole at the heart of distant galaxy Messier 87

April 10, 2019

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. Today, in coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers reveal that they have succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow.

This breakthrough was announced today in a series of six papers published in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The image reveals the black hole at the center of Messier 87 [1...

Read more about Astronomers Capture First Image of a Black Hole: An international collaboration presents paradigm-shifting observations of the gargantuan black hole at the heart of distant galaxy Messier 87