This infographic details the locations of the participating telescopes of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT green) and the Global mm-VLBI Array (GMVA yellow).
“We’ve never actually seen the event horizon - that point of no return where nothing can escape,” National Science Foundation director France Córdova, said at a news conference in Washington, D.C. In the image, you’re seeing tiny bits of light - photons - that managed to escape the area near the event horizon, a boundary where the black hole’s massive gravity drags all nearby matter beyond the point of known perception. (The team is still processing the data for Sagittarius A*). Today’s photo features the supermassive black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy. (The PBS NewsHour visited one in Chile when the project was still under discussion).īy linking together, the scientists created, in essence, a planet-sized telescope built to scan massive parts of the skies. Scientists at eight radio telescopes observatories - stretching from Hawaii to Greenland to the French Alp to Antarctica - captured images of one black hole in our Milky Way - known as Sagittarius A* - and one in a nearby galaxy called M87, over the course of a week in April 2017. Two years ago, an international collective of scientists joined forces to take pictures of two black holes located at the centers of galaxies. The announcement included the release of seven papers that document how the landmark discovery was made.Īs the PBS NewsHour reported Tuesday, the Event Horizon Telescope is a two-year-old, international collaboration bent on capturing direct pictures of black holes: WASHINGTON - On Wednesday, the Event Horizon Telescope released the first-ever image of a black hole - a historic moment shared by scientists spread across seven simultaneous news conferences around the world.