BRUSSELS, April 11 (NNN) — The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a global collaboration, working on establishing the existence of a black hole as theorised in the science and astronomy world, today revealed the first actual image of a black hole in the cosmos.
As expected, it was an exciting global event as thousands came online at the sites where simultaneously held press conferences were held by scientists worldwide — to show the first black hole image, after months of hard work.
The images were made possible through the combined work of radio observatories or radio telescope facilities around the world that had gathered the data which were ultimately translated into final images.
At the press confence streamed by the European Commission’s Youtube channel, scientists explained the long and painstaking processes involved in their breakthrough “close encounter” with the two black holes, namely Sagittarius A in the Milky Way and another in the distant M87 galaxy, that had been set as target for the blackhole sighting.
At the press conference in Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C., Sheperd Doeleman, EHT Director and astrophysicist said: “We have seen what we thought was unseeable. We have seen and taken a picture of a black hole.”
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Scientists have obtained the first image of a black hole, using Event Horizon Telescope observations of the center of the galaxy M87. The image shows a bright ring formed as light bends in the intense gravity around a black hole that is 6.5 billion times more massive than the Sun. This long-sought image provides the strongest evidence to date for the existence of supermassive black holes and opens a new window onto the study of black holes, their event horizons, and gravity. Photo courtesy of Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration
