Credit: NSF
In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration captured the first-ever image of a black hole, and earlier this year, it captured an image of the black hole at the heart of our own Milky Way galaxy.
In an article in Natural Sciences, a leading member of the collaboration—Heino Falcke, Ph.D., of Radboud University Nijmegen—tells the story of the journey that led to the creation of this latest image.
“This was only possible due to a large collaborative effort of scientists and institutions around the world,” Dr. Falcke wrote.
With these black hole images, investigators will now be able to test basic predictions of the theory of general relativity and learn about fundamental astrophysical processes that help to shape entire galaxies and even the cosmos.
Telescopes in space for even sharper images of black holes More information: Heino Falcke, The road toward imaging a black hole: A personal perspective, Natural Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1002/ntls.20220031
Citation: The road to the first image of the black hole at the center of our galaxy (2022, September 21) retrieved 3 October 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-09-road-image-black-hole-center.html
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