{"id":15444,"date":"2021-12-23T12:00:33","date_gmt":"2021-12-23T12:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/?p=15444"},"modified":"2021-12-16T15:18:19","modified_gmt":"2021-12-16T15:18:19","slug":"photographing-m87-galaxy-black-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/photographing-m87-galaxy-black-hole\/15444\/","title":{"rendered":"Photographing the M87 galaxy black hole"},"content":{"rendered":"
Professor Heino Falcke, Radboud University, Nijmegen, spoke to Innovation News Network<\/em> about the first ever photograph of a black hole – which is situated in the M87 galaxy – the challenges involved in obtaining it, as well as other issues such as the use of outer space.<\/h2>\n
IN April 2019, a team of astronomers released the first ever image of a black hole. The team used the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a network of eight linked telescopes located around the world to take the image of the black hole at the centre of the M87 galaxy, some 500 million trillion kilometres away. The result was a photograph of a bright ring around the black hole, caused by the superheated gas surrounding it. This was the first ever image of lensed and relativistic beamed emission on the scale of the event horizon in extreme gravity, and it helps to constrain models for jet formation and energy extraction from black holes.<\/p>\n
Innovation News Network <\/em>spoke to Radboud University\u2019s Professor Heino Falcke, who first launched the idea of the EHT, and who became chair of its science council, about this and other images, and how they might help to unravel a better understanding of these mysterious cosmic regions. He also discusses the use of space and the need for regulations, as well as Galileo navigation and formations of satellites.<\/p>\n
What were the biggest challenges involved in capturing the first ever image of a black hole?<\/h3>\n
It took 25 years to go from the first idea to the actual realisation. During this time, I remained convinced it was possible, but sometimes you just need to have patience. You also need to convince the rest of the community, and that took some time. And, of course, you need to be in a position to obtain major funding.<\/p>\n
The breakthrough for us was the granting of a European Research Council (ERC) synergy proposal, which essentially allowed us to develop from having a good idea but no money to realise it, to being in a leading position and so actually begin to work together to achieve our goals.<\/p>\n
Another significant challenge was to agree on and build a global collaboration, which now encompasses 13 major institutions around the world. That was almost as challenging as bringing together the different funding streams.<\/p>\n
Were you responsible for building that network?<\/h3>\n
It was a common effort. An important push for the network was also being made by our US colleagues, and at some point it was not even clear that we would actually be a part of it or join forces. But European infrastructure and significant European money enabled us to participate on the same footing and, of course, we are now co-leading those efforts.<\/p>\n
As with any such endeavour, some people are keener than others, and I was certainly one of those people, but in the end you have to work together and we will all cross the finishing line at the same time.<\/p>\n
Can you tell me a little about the concept of a \u2018black hole shadow\u2019 and how you approached imaging it?<\/h3>\n
The black hole in the centre of a galaxy called M87 has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun. It is larger than the size of our entire Solar System and it is also one of the heaviest black holes that we think exists.\u00a0 We believed that it would, so to speak, be surrounded by a cloud of light at a certain radio frequency, which we should be able to see with a radio telescope. Of course, you cannot see a black hole directly, but it is thus possible to see it indirectly<\/em>; you can see its \u2018shadow\u2019.<\/p>\n
Within our calculations, which we first made for the centre for our own Galaxy, we found that no matter what we did we always saw a dark patch on the sky. That dark patch always had the same size and was a clear characteristic and prediction of what we should be seeing. We therefore called it a \u2018shadow\u2019 because it is not the black hole itself, but the deficiency of light it creates.<\/p>\n
The term \u2018shadow\u2019 is an apt one. A \u2018normal\u2019 shadow can hide some of the characteristics of an object, and the same is true of a black hole\u2019s shadow: black holes can be rotating or non-rotating, for example, and the shadow makes it difficult to see. Black holes hide behind their shadows.<\/p>\n