Event Horizon Telescope...

The Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope sits atop the plateau of Chajnantor in the Chilean Andes, more than 5,100 metres high. To the left of APEX is the central region of the Milky Way, where the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* lurks. Image credit: ESO/Babak Tafreshi (twanight.org)

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Atomic Clock, Black Holes, Einstein, Radio Telescope, Research

Astronomers building an Earth-size virtual telescope capable of photographing the event horizon of the black hole at the centre of our Milky Way have extended their instrument to the bottom of the Earth — the South Pole — thanks to recent efforts by a team of astronomers with participation of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, Germany.

Last December, an international team of astronomers flew to the Southern Hemisphere: German, Chilean and Korean scientists led by Alan Roy of the MPIfR, traveled to Atacama, Chile, and American scientists led by Dan Marrone of the University of Arizona flew to the South Pole to arrange the telescopes into the largest virtual telescope ever built — the Event Horizon Telescope, or EHT. By combining telescopes across the Earth, the EHT will take the first detailed pictures of black holes.

“The goals of the EHT are to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity, understand how black holes eat and generate relativistic outflows, and to prove the existence of the event horizon, or ‘edge,’ of a black hole,” says Dan Marrone.

Astronomy Now: Planet-sized telescope gives a sharp view into black holes
Research site: Event Horizon Telescope