In April of 2017, astronomers from the Event Horizon Telescope team collected the data
needed to form the first picture of a black hole and very soon they will have analysed
all the data and have the first picture of a black hole.
The estimated time of when the picture will be ready have just been released, but before
we discuss that, let’s first discuss a little about the project.
The array of telescopes were focused on two black holes.
The main focus was on the supermassive black hole in the centre of the Milky Way, Sagittarius
A*.
Sgr A* is 26,000 light years away at the very heart of our galaxy and has a mass of four
million suns.
They were also aiming the telescopes at the black hole in the centre of the galaxy M87,
also known as Virgo A. M87 is a very large elliptical galaxy and is located 54 million
light years away from Earth.
The most common question that gets asked on the topic of photographing a black hole, is
how can you take a picture of a black hole if we can’t see black holes?
We see celestial bodies, such as the Moon, because light reflects off it and reaches
our eyes.
The problem is, light can’t reflect off a black hole because of the black hole's exceptionally
strong gravitational pull that does not let anything escape, not even light the fastest
thing in the universe.
Black holes just take in the light; they don’t reflect or emit any electromagnetic waves,
apart from Hawking radiation but that’s most likely too small to detect.
However, we can see the effects of black holes.
One way is observing the effects of black holes on other objects, such as on a star.
Another way is detecting gravitational waves, when two black holes collide and merge.
Observing the effects of a black hole is essentially how EHT took a photo of a black hole.
We won’t be able to see the black hole, but instead its event horizon.
The Event Horizon Telescope isn’t just one telescope.
EHT actually consists of many telescopes scattered all around the world.
Some of the locations where the telescopes are located are Chile, Hawaii, Arizona, Spain,
Mexico and there’s even a telescope involved that’s in the South Pole!
All the radio telescopes come together and work as one large global array.
And by using a technique called very-long-baseline interferometry, or VLBI, the Event Horizon
Telescope team point every telescope into one gigantic telescope.
Interferometry doesn’t use visible wavelengths, but in fact it uses radio wavelengths.
The joint effort of all the telescopes creates a virtual telescope the size of Earth, the
size needed to take a ‘picture' of something that far away.
By using this giant collaboration of telescopes we will hopefully see the dark, rounded shadow
of the event horizon of Sgr A*.
So, if all goes well, when will we see this picture?
Well, about a week ago, EHT posted an update.
They said that every telescope successfully collected hundreds of terabytes of data in
April.
Each telescope hasn’t got the equipment to process the data so all the hard drives
need to be sent to the MIT Haystack observatory in Massachusetts, where they’ll be able
to correlate and analyse all the data.
Every telescope has sent their data except from the South Pole.
This is why it has taken so long.
Over the last few months, the EHT team has been waiting for the arrival of the data from
the South Pole.
Because of the extreme weather there, there are no flights from February to October so
they’ve not been able to transport the data.
That was until early November when the data was sent, and it finally arrived about a week
ago.
This data, along with the rest of the data, will be processed and compared, which will
take about 3 weeks.
After that, the final analysis of the data will begin.
So if a picture is formed, it won’t be that long until we see it!
Comment down below your thoughts on taking the first picture of a black hole.
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