Event Horizon Telescope super radio telescope to study our galaxy's black hole

[Brian G Turner]

Eight radio telescopes around the Earth will link up to form a massive virtual telescope - the Event Horizon Telescope - and begin an in-depth study of black holes, starting with the one at the centre of our galaxy:

Earth-sized telescope set to snap first picture of a black hole

The Event Horizon Telescope is switching on. It consists of eight radio observatories around the world, including telescopes in Spain, the US and Antarctica. And for just four or five nights between 5 and 14 April, if the weather is clear at all of the observatories, they will all turn on at once.

Each telescope will point at Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, and measure every radio wave coming from its direction. Linking together observatories spread across such a huge area and combining their observations to filter out extra light will effectively create a powerful “virtual telescope” almost the size of Earth.

These telescopes will together capture sharper and more detailed data than we’ve ever had from Sagittarius A*, which we still know very little about, as well as the larger black hole at the centre of nearby galaxy M87.

 

[Dennis E. Taylor]

I guess there's still a four-year-old inside me somewhere. When I read the thread title, I immediately went "Earth to galaxy: We're going to study Uranus."

 

[HanaBi]

M87 is a fascinating galaxy! It is a true elliptical supergiant, with a mass of almost 400 billion stars, 4 times as many as our own Milky Way. And then of course there's its massive Black Hole - some 1000 times as large as the Black Hole in the Milky Way.

So this study will be incredibly interesting, and should offer some startling comparisons between the two Local Group galaxies.