First EVER shots of a black hole in the Milky Way may soon be released by astronomers who previously said it will become ‘one of the most iconic images of science’ ever created
- Press conference on April 10 is expected to be when the findings are announced
- Direct observations of black holes in the Milky Way have never been taken
- Their huge gravity sucks in everything – even light – making pictures difficult
- Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) may have finally managed to snap Sagittarius A*
The first ever direct picture of a black hole in the Milky Way could soon be released to an eager public.
Direct images of these gaping maws are difficult to make as they swallow all light that surrounds them, leaving an absence of anything to picture.
Researchers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) first hinted back in January that they had captured such an image in the Milky.
A press conference on April 10 will see the first results from the Event Horizon Telescope – with many expecting the image to finally be released
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Scientists are teasing science fanatics around the world with the possibility they have finally taken the first ever direct picture of a black hole. Direct observations of these enormous bodies have never been taken (stock)
An international team of astronomers has been monitoring two primary targets, including Sagittarius A*, located in the centre of the Milky Way.
Another target is believed to be M87 in the Virgo cluster of galaxies.
Observations on these black holes have been conducted by a project called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a series of telescopes collectively the size of Earth.
Professor Peter Galison, who works on the project, said that if the project was successful, the image will become the most ‘iconic images of science’.
The EHT Collaboration are in the process of analysing the results from the first full run of data from 2017, which is expected to be unveiled at the upcoming conference.
If the researchers were successful in obtaining a picture it would be one of the most significant breakthroughs in the past 50 years of astronomy.
Sera Markoff, a professor of theoretical astrophysics and astroparticle physics at the University of Amsterdam co-leads the EHT’s Multiwavelength Working Group.
‘If the project succeeds in making an image of a black hole, it would be a really big deal for the fields of physics and astrophysics. Scientists have been working towards this goal for over 20 years,’ she told MailOnline.
As for all scientific results – relating to the data from Sagittarius A*- they first have to go through the peer review process before being released.
Professor Markoff said she could not confirm whether the observations had produced the first direct image of a black hole’s silhouette.
Observations on black holes have been conducted by a project called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a series of telescopes collectively the size of Earth. The announcement has long been expected but a press conference on 10 April 2019 will provide the platform for the ‘first result from the Event Horizon Telescope’ to be revealed (stock image)
WHAT ARE BLACK HOLES?
Black holes are so dense and their gravitational pull is so strong that no form of radiation can escape them – not even light.
They act as intense sources of gravity which hoover up dust and gas around them.
Their intense gravitational pull is thought to be what stars in galaxies orbit around.
How they are formed is still poorly understood.
Supermassive black holes are incredibly dense areas in the centre of galaxies with masses that can be billions of times that of the sun. They cause dips in space-time (artist’s impression) and even light cannot escape their gravitational pull
Astronomers believe they may form when a large cloud of gas up to 100,000 times bigger than the sun, collapses into a black hole.
Many of these black hole seeds then merge to form much larger supermassive black holes, which are found at the centre of every known massive galaxy.
Alternatively, a supermassive black hole seed could come from a giant star, about 100 times the sun’s mass, that ultimately forms into a black hole after it runs out of fuel and collapses.
When these giant stars die, they also go ‘supernova’, a huge explosion that expels the matter from the outer layers of the star into deep space.
‘Seeing these black holes in the sky is the equivalent of looking at the head of a pin in New York from where I’m sitting in Amsterdam,’ Professor Markoff told MailOnline.
Until now, a black hole has never been observed. The main obstacle is that they are so compact that a telescope the size of Earth would be needed to capture an image of the closest one to our planet.
The Event Horizon Telescope, an international collaboration, uses between 15 and 20 telescopic dishes around the world to collectively observe black holes.
The telescopes all need to be pointed in the direction of the black hole and measure radio waves, which are stored on banks of hard disk drives.
Each telescope is individually observed from each area, spanning the South Pole, Europe, South America, Africa, North America and Australia.
The collected radio wave data is then collectively stored on a supercomputer.
Professor Markoff said that the film Interstellar includes an ‘idealised’ venison of a black but it’s not far from what she would expect to see.
Aside from providing insight into what black holes look like, the data collected from the telescope could provide fascinating insight into how they work.
