News

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...

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...

EHT Panel Selected for SXSW in March 2019

January 01, 2019

Predicted almost a century ago by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, black holes not only exist, but actually power some of the most extreme phenomena in the Universe. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a global effort to construct an Earth-sized...

Lifting the veil on the heart of the black hole at the heart of our galaxy.

January 21, 2019

Cambridge, MA--A black hole four million times as massive as our Sun lurks at the center of the Milky Way. This black hole, called Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), swallows nearby material that glows brightly as it approaches the event horizon. This galactic...

2019 Science Breakthrough of the Year: Imaging the Event Horizon

December 11, 2018

With every year that goes by, the total amount of knowledge that humanity accumulates only grows and grows. At the start of 2015, humanity had never detected a gravitational wave; at present, we've detected 11, and full expect to find perhaps hundreds...

Event Horizon Telescope ready to image black hole

February 16, 2017

They have built an Earth-sized "virtual telescope" by linking a large array of radio receivers - from the South Pole, to Hawaii, to the Americas and Europe. There is optimism that observations to be conducted during 5-14 April could finally deliver the...

How Do You Take a Picture of a Black Hole? With a Telescope as Big as the Earth

October 04, 2018

We live 26,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way. That’s a rounding error by cosmological standards, but still — it’s far. When the light now reaching Earth from the galactic center first took flight, people were crossing the Bering Strait land...

An ‘Earth-sized’ telescope takes aim at the first-ever image of a black hole

April 07, 2017

Selected Articles: Nature: How to hunt for a black hole with a telescope the size of Earth NBC News: Earth-Sized Telescope May Let Us See a Black Hole for the First Time Ever Vox: Astronomers just turned on a planet-size telescope to take a picture of a...

NY Times: Black Hole Hunters

June 08, 2015

"Aiming to make the first portrait of the hungry monster at the center of our galaxy, astronomers built 'a telescope as big as the world.'" NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/science/black-hole-event-horizon-tele…

How a global network of telescopes may give us first glimpse of a black hole

November 24, 2014

"Even though black holes are vital to our understanding of the universe, no one has ever seen one -- yet. To change this, a team of scientists in northern Chile, is using a network of telescopes around the globe to capture an image of a black hole for the...

Globe-spanning telescope array glimpses magnetic field around Milky Way’s black hole

December 03, 2015

"A wide-ranging array of radio dishes trained on the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy has revealed a glimpse of the magnetic field close to the Milky Way’s dark heart. The results could help explain why black holes, although not...