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Event Horizon Telescope

Adapted from Wikipedia · Explorer experience

This is an image of the shadow of a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy Messier 87, captured by a global network of telescopes working together. The bright ring around the dark center shows hot gas orbiting the black hole.

The Event Horizon Telescope

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a special group of telescopes all around the world that work together. They are called radio telescopes because they look at space using radio waves. By working together, they act like one very big telescope. This helps scientists see very small details in space, even things as tiny as the edge of a black hole.

The EHT project started in 2009 after many years of research. Scientists from over 300 groups in more than 20 countries work together on this amazing project. They study black holes, especially the ones at the centers of galaxies.

In 2019, the EHT made a big discovery! They took the very first picture of a black hole. This black hole is in a galaxy called Messier 87. The picture was taken using very small waves, just 1.3 millimeters long. Later, in 2022, they took a picture of the huge black hole at the center of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, called Sagittarius A*. These pictures help us learn more about space and how black holes work.

The EHT is made up of many radio telescopes around the world. They use a special method called very-long-baseline interferometry to act like one giant telescope, as big as the Earth itself. This helps scientists see very small details in space. Since 2006, more telescopes have joined the EHT every year.

Scientists all around the world work together on the EHT. Some of these groups are at the University of Arizona, University of Chicago, Goethe University Frankfurt, and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. This teamwork helps them combine data from telescopes everywhere, so they can study very distant and tiny objects in space.

Images

The Crab Nebula: A beautiful remnant of an ancient star explosion, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.
A diagram showing how the Event Horizon Telescope uses antennas and atomic clocks to capture images of distant space objects.
A chart showing different telescope observations of the galaxy M87, organized by frequency.
An X-ray image of Sagittarius A*, a bright region in space studied by NASA.
A zoom sequence showing how telescopes magnify distant objects in space, from the view of the human eye to the first ever image of a black hole.
Astronomical image of the blazar 3C 279, showing a powerful jet streaming from its supermassive black hole.
A colorful image of the galaxy Centaurus A created using data from powerful telescopes.
An image showing the twisted jet of a distant star-like object, captured by powerful telescopes to study its magnetic field.
Astronomical visualization showing radio waves from a distant object, with patterns indicating intensity and polarization.
Scientific diagram showing different components of a telescope image of NRAO 530, with color scales and contour lines.
A stunning view of Earth rising over the lunar horizon, as seen by astronauts during the Apollo 8 mission.
An artist's depiction of HE 1523-0901, one of the oldest known stars in our galaxy, located about 7,500 light-years from Earth.

Related articles

Galaxy
Messier 87
Milky Way
Sagittarius A*
University of Chicago

This article is a child-friendly adaptation of the Wikipedia article on Event Horizon Telescope, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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