First ever picture of Black Hole. Wednesday

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

@ChaoticOrder, since the BH is warping space around it, I don't think it matters what angle we see it. Add onto it SMBH are spinning near the speed of light anyway, I am not certain that moving towards us would factor that much more into the image. I am thinking it is like seeing dawn behind a mountain before the sun actually rises.

It doesn't matter for the black hole its self, but for the accretion disk it does matter, different angles will look a bit different. And yes the velocity of the disk relative to us matters, the part of the disk moving towards us appears brighter and the part moving away looks dimmer, that's why half the disk looks brighter. The accretion disk is rotating at a considerable fraction of the speed of light which is why the effect is so pronounced in the image, but it's not near the speed of light.

originally posted by: Starlanced
Where did 55 million come from? The galaxy is only 100,000 to 120,000 lys across and we live about 2/3s of the way out so at most it's 30-40,000 lys away.

It's not our own galaxy, it's Messier 87.

Where did 55 million come from? The galaxy is only 100,000 to 120,000 lys across and we live about 2/3s of the way out so at most it's 30-40,000 lys away

The image that has been obtained is of the supermassive black hole at the centre of M87, a very active galaxy that is around 55 miliion light years away. Apparently, the black hole at the core of M87 is around 6.5 billion solar masses, which makes it over 1500 times more massive than the black hole at the centre of our own galaxy!

nm, I post to slow.

My bad, I had assumed they would image the black hole at Sag A* figuring much closer but I suppose too much dust in the way.

"Amination Explained: First Ever Picture of a Black Hole"




"National Science Foundation/Event Horizon Telescope Press Conference"





"In The Shadow of a Black Hole"

a reply to: Erno86

I love the last :30 seconds of the last video where they continue to hold out hope they can (finally) prove Einstein wrong!

Don't hold your breath, World!

a reply to: ChaoticOrder


It is still pretty fast! I mean, if you are travelling around the last photon track, you would see the back of your head! When that star was spaghetti-fied, the whole thing was strung out around the SMBH so fast that it magnetically reconnected with itself and lit up the universe.

Yeah, it not the "speed of light". Sorry if it sounded that way. "Relativistic" would have been more appropriate but not sure everybody knows what that entails.

They actually took 4 day's worth of images. If you look, it looks like the plasma blob seen in the EH moves from the right hand side to down and center over the days (the photo @OP is the last day, April 11). I think there is animation somewhere.

Not sure if that helps answer your question or makes it all the more confusing!

For a long time now, I've thought of black holes as the donut hole of a torus, except with what's on "the other side" of the hole being some form of "somewhere" (or some-when) else.

At last...vindication in the form of photographic proof!

Alright, alright, no its not, but I swear that fuzzy blob if ancient light looks like its being pulled in like water rushing into a sieve. Awesome to see! And crazy to think it wasn't long ago that we became "fairly certain" there was a black hole at the center of our galaxy.

...and that other stars had planets
...and that other planets have water

Many if the things that were safe assumptions believed by few, are becoming obvious and proven facts.

originally posted by: ChaoticOrder

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

@ChaoticOrder, since the BH is warping space around it, I don't think it matters what angle we see it. Add onto it SMBH are spinning near the speed of light anyway, I am not certain that moving towards us would factor that much more into the image. I am thinking it is like seeing dawn behind a mountain before the sun actually rises.

It doesn't matter for the black hole its self, but for the accretion disk it does matter, different angles will look a bit different. And yes the velocity of the disk relative to us matters, the part of the disk moving towards us appears brighter and the part moving away looks dimmer, that's why half the disk looks brighter. The accretion disk is rotating at a considerable fraction of the speed of light which is why the effect is so pronounced in the image, but it's not near the speed of light.

Very interesting. I was wondering why the light at the top was dimmer. I just didn't want to be the guy in class who asks why. I also thought the rotation speed was faster than the speed of light. HMPF.

originally posted by: dogstar23

For a long time now, I've thought of black holes as the donut hole of a torus, except with what's on "the other side" of the hole being some form of "somewhere" (or some-when) else.

At last...vindication in the form of photographic proof!

Alright, alright, no its not, but I swear that fuzzy blob if ancient light looks like its being pulled in like water rushing into a sieve. Awesome to see! And crazy to think it wasn't long ago that we became "fairly certain" there was a black hole at the center of our galaxy.

...and that other stars had planets
...and that other planets have water

Many if the things that were safe assumptions believed by few, are becoming obvious and proven facts.

Not to mention all the things we can't see in that image. Too bad it can't be crystal clear, I bet it would look amazing, more so than now.

What would be really cool is if we found another earth in another galaxy and brought some of the unrefined, raw resources back.

originally posted by: LSU2018
Too bad it can't be crystal clear, I bet it would look amazing, more so than now.

Just give it a few decades or centuries, and we will have a virtual radio telescope the size of the Solar System.

originally posted by: FauxMulder

originally posted by: TruGueser
a reply to: wildespace

we have to be conditioned to see something in an informational video?

sounds shady to me.

Yes, a guy explaining basic physics and how light interacts around the event horizon is super shady.

I say grab the pitch forks and torches and lets march on those suckers before they take us out.

Ya because so many humans and scientists have actually interacted with a black hole so they not only can see it but know everything about it.

Basic physics lmao,

originally posted by: Starlanced
Where did 55 million come from? The galaxy is only 100,000 to 120,000 lys across and we live about 2/3s of the way out so at most it's 30-40,000 lys away.

Even that could easily be a massive lie.

People just repeat what they are told.

And being totally unable to EVER verify anything in this field makes it easy for the hucksters.

originally posted by: ParasuvO

originally posted by: FauxMulder

originally posted by: TruGueser
a reply to: wildespace

we have to be conditioned to see something in an informational video?

sounds shady to me.

Yes, a guy explaining basic physics and how light interacts around the event horizon is super shady.

I say grab the pitch forks and torches and lets march on those suckers before they take us out.

Ya because so many humans and scientists have actually interacted with a black hole so they not only can see it but know everything about it.

Basic physics lmao,

Einstein's Relativity equations predict black holes, but also allow to calculate how light would behave around a black hole.

In 1979 (40 years ago), Dr Jean-Pierre Luminet at The French National Centre for Scientific Research used an early computer to run these calculations, and painstakingly dotted out the results with ink on paper, producing a crude image.

Here it is (the negative version):



It's not just an artist's imagination, it's the actual result of calculations, based on what we know about gravity and Relativity.

www.engadget.com...

With the actual image of a black hole we have now, we can see how similar both images look, and thus see that Einstein's equations are correct.

It's still early days for imaging black holes, but I'm sure future decades will bring even more accurate results and better images.

First-Ever Black Hole Photographed named "Powehi" by Hawaii university professor. Powehi means "the adorned fathomless dark creation" or "embellished dark source of unending creation" and comes from the Kumulipo, an 18th-century Hawaiian creation chant. Po is a profound dark source of unending creation, while wehi, honored with embellishments, is one of the chant's descriptions of po.

originally posted by: Starlanced
My bad, I had assumed they would image the black hole at Sag A* figuring much closer but I suppose too much dust in the way.

Correct. This image is not of Sagittarius A* in our own galaxy, but of a black hole in Galaxy M87, which is 55 Million lightyears away.

But they are also working on compiling an image of Sgr A*. That was one of the targets of this imaging exercise, along with this one in M87. They say they hope to have an image of Sgr A* as well in the near future, but it takes a while to compile the data and stitch it all together. After all, the data comes from multiple telescopes (the one for the M87 black hole was data compiled from 8 different radio telescopes spread around the world).

And the dust is not really a problem since these images are being resolved in radio waves instead of visible light. While the visible light wavelengths of the EM spectrum emitted by Sgr A* can be blocked by the dust, the radio wavelengths of the EM spectrum can pass through the dust.