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Calculated Shard: 12 (from laksa176)

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curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa012.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://phys.org/news/2019-04-astronomers-unveil-photo-black-hole.html\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://phys.org/news/2019-04-astronomers-unveil-photo-black-hole.html\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2019-04-astronomers-unveil-photo-black-hole.html","crawl_time":1775712439,"first_indexed_time":1554902211,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"org,phys!\/news\/2019-04-astronomers-unveil-photo-black-hole.html s443","src_root_hash":"5200908481159124812","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"Astronomers deliver first photo of black hole","meta_descriptions":["Astronomers on Wednesday unveiled the first photo of a black hole, one of the star-devouring monsters scattered throughout the Universe and obscured by impenetrable shields of gravity."],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"Credit: NSF\nAstronomers on Wednesday unveiled the first photo of a black hole, one of the star-devouring monsters scattered throughout the Universe and obscured by impenetrable shields of gravity.\nThe image of a dark core encircled by a flame-orange halo of white-hot plasma looks like any number of artists' renderings over the last 30 years.\nBut this time, it's the real deal.\n\"The history of science will be divided into the time before the image, and the time after the image,\" said Michael Kramer, director at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy.\nCarlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation called the feat a \"huge breakthrough for humanity.\"\nThe supermassive black hole immortalised by a far-flung network of radio telescopes is 50 million lightyears away at the centre of a galaxy known as M87.\n\"It's a distance that we could have barely imagined,\" Frederic Gueth, an astronomer at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and co-author of studies detailing the findings, told AFP.\nMost speculation had centred on the other candidate targeted by the Event Horizon Telescope: Sagittarius A*, a closer but smaller black hole at the centre of our own galaxy, the Milky Way.\nLocking down an image of M87's supermassive black hole at such distance is comparable to photographing a pebble on the Moon, the scientists said.\nIt was also very much a team effort.\n\"Instead of constructing a giant telescope that would collapse under its own weight, we combined many observatories,\" Michael Bremer, an astronomer at the Institute for Millimetric Radio Astronomy (IRAM) in Grenoble, told AFP.\nEarth in a thimble\nOver several days in April 2017, eight radio telescopes in Hawaii, Arizona, Spain, Mexico, Chile, and the South Pole zeroed in on Sag A* and M87.\nKnitted together, they formed a virtual observatory some 12,000 kilometres across—roughly the diameter of Earth.\n00:00\n00:00\nThe Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) -- a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration -- was designed to capture images of a black hole. Today, in coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers reveal that they have succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow.For more multimedia, visit NSF.gov\/blackhole, including text-free versions of all images. Credit: NSF\n\"The data is like an incomplete puzzle set,\" said team member Monika Moscibrodzka, an astronomer at Radboud University. \"We only see pieces of the real true image, and then we have to fill in the gaps of the missing pieces.\"\nIn the end, M87 was more photogenic. Like a fidgety child, Sag A* was too \"active\" to capture a clear picture, the scientists said.\n\"What we see in the image is the shadow of the black hole's rim—known as the event horizon, or the point of no return—set against the luminous accretion disk,\" Gueth told AFP.\nThe unprecedented image—so often imagined in science and science fiction —- has been analysed in six studies co-authored by 200 experts from 60-odd institutions and published Wednesday in\nAstrophysical Journal Letters\n.\n\"I never thought that I would see a real one in my lifetime,\" said CNRS astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Luminet, author in 1979 of the first digital simulation of a black hole.\nCoined in the mid-60s by US physicist John Archibald Wheeler, the term \"black hole\" refers to a point in space where matter is so compressed as to create a gravity field from which even light cannot escape.\n00:00\n00:00\nThe Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) -- a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration -- was designed to capture images of a black hole. For more multimedia, visit NSF.gov\/blackhole. Credit: NSF\nThe more mass, the bigger the hole. At the same scale of compression, Earth would fit inside a thimble.\nA successful outcome depended in part on the vagaries of weather during the April 2017 observation period.\n\"For everything to work, we needed to have clear visibility at every (telescope) location worldwide\", said IRAM scientist Pablo Torne, recalling collective tension, fatigue and, finally, relief.\n'Hell of a Christmas present'\nTorne was at the controls of the Pico Veleta telescope in Spain's Sierra Madre mountains.\nAfter that, is was eight months of nail-biting while scientists at MIT Haystack Observatory in Massachusetts and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn crunched the data.\nThe Event Horizon Telescope—a network of eight radio telescopes across the globe—gathered data to generate the first image of a black hole some 50 million lightyears from Earth\nThe Universe is filled with electromagnetic \"noise\", and there was no guarantee M87's faint signals could be extracted from a mountain of data so voluminous it could not be delivered via the Internet.\nThere was at least one glitch.\n\"We were desperately waiting for the data from the South Pole Telescope, which—due to extreme weather conditions during the southern hemisphere winter—didn't arrive until six months later,\" recalled Helger Rottmann from the Max Planck Institute.\nIt arrived, to be precise, on December 23, 2017.\n\"When, a few hours later, we saw that everything was there, it was one hell of a Christmas present,\" Rottmann said.\nIt would take another year, however, to piece together the data into an image.\nCoined in the mid-60s by American physicist John Archibald Wheeler, the term \"black hole\" refers to a point in space where matter is so compressed as to create a gravity field from which even light cannot escape\n\"To be absolutely sure, we did the work four times with four different teams,\" said Gueth.\nTeam scientists presenting the findings at a news conference in Brussels were visibly moved.\n\"We are looking at a region we have never looked at before, that we cannot really imagine being there,\" said Heino Falcke, chair of the EHT Science Council.\n\"It feels like looking at the gates of hell, at the end of space and time –- the event horizon, the point of no return.\"\n© 2019 AFP\nCitation\n:\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAstronomers deliver first photo of black hole (2019, April 10)\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tretrieved 9 April 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tfrom https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2019-04-astronomers-unveil-photo-black-hole.html\nThis document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.","attrs_markdown":"[![Phys.org](https:\/\/phys.b-cdn.net\/tmpl\/v6\/img\/logo-header.png)](https:\/\/phys.org\/)\n\nTopics\n\n- [Week's top](https:\/\/phys.org\/weekly-news\/)\n- [Latest news](https:\/\/phys.org\/latest-news\/)\n- [Unread news](https:\/\/phys.org\/unread-news\/)\n- [Subscribe](https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2019-04-astronomers-unveil-photo-black-hole.html)\n### Science X Account\n\n- [Nanotechnology](https:\/\/phys.org\/nanotech-news\/)\n- [Physics](https:\/\/phys.org\/physics-news\/)\n- [Earth](https:\/\/phys.org\/earth-news\/)\n- [Astronomy & Space](https:\/\/phys.org\/space-news\/)\n- [Chemistry](https:\/\/phys.org\/chemistry-news\/)\n- [Biology](https:\/\/phys.org\/biology-news\/)\n- [Other Sciences](https:\/\/phys.org\/science-news\/)\n- [![Medical Xpress](https:\/\/phys.b-cdn.net\/tmpl\/v6\/img\/MedicalXpress2.svg) Medicine](https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/)\n- [![Tech Xplore](https:\/\/phys.b-cdn.net\/tmpl\/v6\/img\/techX_w.svg) Technology](https:\/\/techxplore.com\/)\n\n- share this\\!\n- [20\\.9K]()\n- [147](https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2019-04-astronomers-unveil-photo-black-hole.html)\n- [Share](https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2019-04-astronomers-unveil-photo-black-hole.html)\n- [Email](mailto:)\n\n1. [Home](https:\/\/phys.org\/)\n2. [Astronomy & Space](https:\/\/phys.org\/space-news\/)\n3. [Astronomy](https:\/\/phys.org\/space-news\/astronomy\/)\n***\nApril 10, 2019\n\n# Astronomers deliver first photo of black hole\n[Add as preferred source](https:\/\/google.com\/preferences\/source?q=https%3A%2F%2Fphys.org%2F)\n***\n\n![Astronomers deliver first photo of black hole](https:\/\/scx1.b-cdn.net\/csz\/news\/800a\/2019\/5caded214d11e.jpg)\n\nCredit: NSF\n\nAstronomers on Wednesday unveiled the first photo of a black hole, one of the star-devouring monsters scattered throughout the Universe and obscured by impenetrable shields of gravity.\n\nThe image of a dark core encircled by a flame-orange halo of white-hot plasma looks like any number of artists' renderings over the last 30 years.\n\nBut this time, it's the real deal.\n\n\"The history of science will be divided into the time before the image, and the time after the image,\" said Michael Kramer, director at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy.\n\nCarlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation called the feat a \"huge breakthrough for humanity.\"\n\nThe supermassive black hole immortalised by a far-flung network of radio telescopes is 50 million lightyears away at the centre of a galaxy known as M87.\n\n\"It's a distance that we could have barely imagined,\" Frederic Gueth, an astronomer at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and co-author of studies detailing the findings, told AFP.\n\nMost speculation had centred on the other candidate targeted by the Event Horizon Telescope: Sagittarius A\\*, a closer but smaller black hole at the centre of our own galaxy, the Milky Way.\n\nLocking down an image of M87's supermassive black hole at such distance is comparable to photographing a pebble on the Moon, the scientists said.\n\nIt was also very much a team effort.\n\n\"Instead of constructing a giant telescope that would collapse under its own weight, we combined many observatories,\" Michael Bremer, an astronomer at the Institute for Millimetric Radio Astronomy (IRAM) in Grenoble, told AFP.\n\n## Earth in a thimble\nOver several days in April 2017, eight radio telescopes in Hawaii, Arizona, Spain, Mexico, Chile, and the South Pole zeroed in on Sag A\\* and M87.\n\nKnitted together, they formed a virtual observatory some 12,000 kilometres across—roughly the diameter of Earth.\n\nPausePlay\n\n% buffered\n\n00:00\n\n00:00\n\nUnmuteMute\n\nDisable captionsEnable captions\n\nSettings\n\nCaptionsDisabled\n\nQuality0\n\nSpeedNormal\n\nCaptionsGo back to previous menu\n\nQualityGo back to previous menu\n\nSpeedGo back to previous menu\n\n0\\.5×\n\n0\\.75×\n\nNormal\n\n1\\.25×\n\n1\\.5×\n\n1\\.75×\n\n2×\n\n4×\n\nPIP\n\nExit fullscreenEnter fullscreen\n\nPlay\n\nThe Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) -- a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration -- was designed to capture images of a black hole. Today, in coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers reveal that they have succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow.For more multimedia, visit NSF.gov\/blackhole, including text-free versions of all images. Credit: NSF\n\n\"The data is like an incomplete puzzle set,\" said team member Monika Moscibrodzka, an astronomer at Radboud University. \"We only see pieces of the real true image, and then we have to fill in the gaps of the missing pieces.\"\n\nIn the end, M87 was more photogenic. Like a fidgety child, Sag A\\* was too \"active\" to capture a clear picture, the scientists said.\n\n\"What we see in the image is the shadow of the black hole's rim—known as the event horizon, or the point of no return—set against the luminous accretion disk,\" Gueth told AFP.\n\nThe unprecedented image—so often imagined in science and science fiction —- has been analysed in six studies co-authored by 200 experts from 60-odd institutions and published Wednesday in *Astrophysical Journal Letters*.\n\n\"I never thought that I would see a real one in my lifetime,\" said CNRS astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Luminet, author in 1979 of the first digital simulation of a black hole.\n\nCoined in the mid-60s by US physicist John Archibald Wheeler, the term \"black hole\" refers to a point in space where matter is so compressed as to create a gravity field from which even light cannot escape.\n\nPausePlay\n\n% buffered\n\n00:00\n\n00:00\n\nUnmuteMute\n\nDisable captionsEnable captions\n\nSettings\n\nCaptionsDisabled\n\nQuality0\n\nSpeedNormal\n\nCaptionsGo back to previous menu\n\nQualityGo back to previous menu\n\nSpeedGo back to previous menu\n\n0\\.5×\n\n0\\.75×\n\nNormal\n\n1\\.25×\n\n1\\.5×\n\n1\\.75×\n\n2×\n\n4×\n\nPIP\n\nExit fullscreenEnter fullscreen\n\nPlay\n\nThe Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) -- a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration -- was designed to capture images of a black hole. For more multimedia, visit NSF.gov\/blackhole. Credit: NSF\n\nThe more mass, the bigger the hole. At the same scale of compression, Earth would fit inside a thimble.\n\nA successful outcome depended in part on the vagaries of weather during the April 2017 observation period.\n\n\"For everything to work, we needed to have clear visibility at every (telescope) location worldwide\", said IRAM scientist Pablo Torne, recalling collective tension, fatigue and, finally, relief.\n\nDiscover the latest in science, tech, and space with over **100,000 subscribers** who rely on Phys.org for daily insights. Sign up for our [free newsletter](https:\/\/sciencex.com\/help\/newsletter\/) and get updates on breakthroughs, innovations, and research that matter—**daily or weekly**.\n\n## 'Hell of a Christmas present'\nTorne was at the controls of the Pico Veleta telescope in Spain's Sierra Madre mountains.\n\nAfter that, is was eight months of nail-biting while scientists at MIT Haystack Observatory in Massachusetts and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn crunched the data.\n\n![The Event Horizon Telescope—a network of eight radio telescopes across the globe—gathered data to generate the first image of a ](https:\/\/scx1.b-cdn.net\/csz\/news\/800a\/2019\/theeventhori.jpg)\n\nThe Event Horizon Telescope—a network of eight radio telescopes across the globe—gathered data to generate the first image of a black hole some 50 million lightyears from Earth\n\nThe Universe is filled with electromagnetic \"noise\", and there was no guarantee M87's faint signals could be extracted from a mountain of data so voluminous it could not be delivered via the Internet.\n\nThere was at least one glitch.\n\n\"We were desperately waiting for the data from the South Pole Telescope, which—due to extreme weather conditions during the southern hemisphere winter—didn't arrive until six months later,\" recalled Helger Rottmann from the Max Planck Institute.\n\nIt arrived, to be precise, on December 23, 2017.\n\n\"When, a few hours later, we saw that everything was there, it was one hell of a Christmas present,\" Rottmann said.\n\nIt would take another year, however, to piece together the data into an image.\n\n![Coined in the mid-60s by American physicist John Archibald Wheeler, the term \\&quot;black hole\\&quot; refers to a point in space w](https:\/\/scx1.b-cdn.net\/csz\/news\/800a\/2019\/coinedinthem.jpg)\n\nCoined in the mid-60s by American physicist John Archibald Wheeler, the term \"black hole\" refers to a point in space where matter is so compressed as to create a gravity field from which even light cannot escape\n\n\"To be absolutely sure, we did the work four times with four different teams,\" said Gueth.\n\nTeam scientists presenting the findings at a news conference in Brussels were visibly moved.\n\n\"We are looking at a region we have never looked at before, that we cannot really imagine being there,\" said Heino Falcke, chair of the EHT Science Council.\n\n\"It feels like looking at the gates of hell, at the end of space and time –- the event horizon, the point of no return.\"\n\n###### More information\nPAPERS:\n\n- [Paper I: The Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole](https:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.3847\/2041-8213\/ab0ec7)\n- [Paper II: Array and Instrumentation](https:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.3847\/2041-8213\/ab0c96)\n- [Paper III: Data processing and Calibration](https:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.3847\/2041-8213\/ab0c57)\n- [Paper IV: Imaging the Central Supermassive Black Hole](https:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.3847\/2041-8213\/ab0e85)\n- [Paper V: Physical Origin of the Asymmetric Ring](https:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.3847\/2041-8213\/ab0f43)\n- [Paper VI: The Shadow and Mass of the Central Black Hole](https:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.3847\/2041-8213\/ab1141)\n\n© 2019 AFP\n\n**Citation**: Astronomers deliver first photo of black hole (2019, April 10) retrieved 9 April 2026 from https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2019-04-astronomers-unveil-photo-black-hole.html\n\nThis document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. 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Consider supporting Science X's mission by getting a premium account.\n\n[Remove ads](https:\/\/sciencex.com\/donate\/?utm_source=phys&utm_medium=desktop&utm_campaign=popup)\n\n[Maybe later](https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2019-04-astronomers-unveil-photo-black-hole.html)\n\n[![Medical Xpress](https:\/\/phys.b-cdn.net\/tmpl\/v6\/img\/MedicalXpress.svg) Medical Xpress Medical research advances and health news](https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/)\n\n[![Tech Xplore](https:\/\/phys.b-cdn.net\/tmpl\/v6\/img\/techexploer.svg) Tech Xplore The latest engineering, electronics and technology advances](https:\/\/techxplore.com\/)\n\n[![Science X](https:\/\/phys.b-cdn.net\/tmpl\/v6\/img\/ScienceX.svg) Science X The most comprehensive sci-tech news coverage on the web](https:\/\/sciencex.com\/)\n\n## Newsletters\n## Follow us\n\n- [Top](https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2019-04-astronomers-unveil-photo-black-hole.html)\n- [Home](https:\/\/phys.org\/)\n- [Search](https:\/\/phys.org\/search\/)\n- [Mobile version](https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2019-04-astronomers-unveil-photo-black-hole.html?deviceType=mobile)\n\n- [Help](https:\/\/sciencex.com\/help\/)\n- [FAQ](https:\/\/sciencex.com\/help\/contactus\/)\n- [About](https:\/\/sciencex.com\/help\/about-us\/)\n- [Contact](https:\/\/sciencex.com\/help\/feedback\/)\n\n- [Support us](https:\/\/sciencex.com\/help\/donate\/)\n- [Science X Account](https:\/\/sciencex.com\/profile\/)\n- [Archive](https:\/\/phys.org\/archive\/)\n- [News wire](https:\/\/sciencex.com\/wire-news\/)\n\n- [Android app](https:\/\/play.google.com\/store\/apps\/details?id=com.PhysOrg.RssLite)\n- [iOS app](https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/app\/phys-org\/id356443503?mt=8)\n- [RSS feeds](https:\/\/phys.org\/feeds\/)\n- [Push notification]()\n\n© Phys.org 2003 - 2026 powered by [Science X Network](https:\/\/sciencex.com\/)\n\n[Privacy policy](https:\/\/sciencex.com\/help\/privacy\/) [Terms of use](https:\/\/sciencex.com\/help\/terms\/)\n\n#### E-mail newsletter\n#### Follow us\n\n![Quantcast](https:\/\/pixel.quantserve.com\/pixel\/p-5dNhPAnM9r0yY.gif)","attrs_readable_markdown":"![Astronomers deliver first photo of black hole](https:\/\/scx1.b-cdn.net\/csz\/news\/800a\/2019\/5caded214d11e.jpg)\n\nCredit: NSF\n\nAstronomers on Wednesday unveiled the first photo of a black hole, one of the star-devouring monsters scattered throughout the Universe and obscured by impenetrable shields of gravity.\n\nThe image of a dark core encircled by a flame-orange halo of white-hot plasma looks like any number of artists' renderings over the last 30 years.\n\nBut this time, it's the real deal.\n\n\"The history of science will be divided into the time before the image, and the time after the image,\" said Michael Kramer, director at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy.\n\nCarlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation called the feat a \"huge breakthrough for humanity.\"\n\nThe supermassive black hole immortalised by a far-flung network of radio telescopes is 50 million lightyears away at the centre of a galaxy known as M87.\n\n\"It's a distance that we could have barely imagined,\" Frederic Gueth, an astronomer at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and co-author of studies detailing the findings, told AFP.\n\nMost speculation had centred on the other candidate targeted by the Event Horizon Telescope: Sagittarius A\\*, a closer but smaller black hole at the centre of our own galaxy, the Milky Way.\n\nLocking down an image of M87's supermassive black hole at such distance is comparable to photographing a pebble on the Moon, the scientists said.\n\nIt was also very much a team effort.\n\n\"Instead of constructing a giant telescope that would collapse under its own weight, we combined many observatories,\" Michael Bremer, an astronomer at the Institute for Millimetric Radio Astronomy (IRAM) in Grenoble, told AFP.\n\n## Earth in a thimble\nOver several days in April 2017, eight radio telescopes in Hawaii, Arizona, Spain, Mexico, Chile, and the South Pole zeroed in on Sag A\\* and M87.\n\nKnitted together, they formed a virtual observatory some 12,000 kilometres across—roughly the diameter of Earth.\n\n00:00\n\n00:00\n\nThe Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) -- a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration -- was designed to capture images of a black hole. Today, in coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers reveal that they have succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow.For more multimedia, visit NSF.gov\/blackhole, including text-free versions of all images. Credit: NSF\n\n\"The data is like an incomplete puzzle set,\" said team member Monika Moscibrodzka, an astronomer at Radboud University. \"We only see pieces of the real true image, and then we have to fill in the gaps of the missing pieces.\"\n\nIn the end, M87 was more photogenic. Like a fidgety child, Sag A\\* was too \"active\" to capture a clear picture, the scientists said.\n\n\"What we see in the image is the shadow of the black hole's rim—known as the event horizon, or the point of no return—set against the luminous accretion disk,\" Gueth told AFP.\n\nThe unprecedented image—so often imagined in science and science fiction —- has been analysed in six studies co-authored by 200 experts from 60-odd institutions and published Wednesday in *Astrophysical Journal Letters*.\n\n\"I never thought that I would see a real one in my lifetime,\" said CNRS astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Luminet, author in 1979 of the first digital simulation of a black hole.\n\nCoined in the mid-60s by US physicist John Archibald Wheeler, the term \"black hole\" refers to a point in space where matter is so compressed as to create a gravity field from which even light cannot escape.\n\n00:00\n\n00:00\n\nThe Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) -- a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration -- was designed to capture images of a black hole. For more multimedia, visit NSF.gov\/blackhole. Credit: NSF\n\nThe more mass, the bigger the hole. At the same scale of compression, Earth would fit inside a thimble.\n\nA successful outcome depended in part on the vagaries of weather during the April 2017 observation period.\n\n\"For everything to work, we needed to have clear visibility at every (telescope) location worldwide\", said IRAM scientist Pablo Torne, recalling collective tension, fatigue and, finally, relief.\n\n## 'Hell of a Christmas present'\nTorne was at the controls of the Pico Veleta telescope in Spain's Sierra Madre mountains.\n\nAfter that, is was eight months of nail-biting while scientists at MIT Haystack Observatory in Massachusetts and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn crunched the data.\n\n![The Event Horizon Telescope—a network of eight radio telescopes across the globe—gathered data to generate the first image of a ](https:\/\/scx1.b-cdn.net\/csz\/news\/800a\/2019\/theeventhori.jpg)\n\nThe Event Horizon Telescope—a network of eight radio telescopes across the globe—gathered data to generate the first image of a black hole some 50 million lightyears from Earth\n\nThe Universe is filled with electromagnetic \"noise\", and there was no guarantee M87's faint signals could be extracted from a mountain of data so voluminous it could not be delivered via the Internet.\n\nThere was at least one glitch.\n\n\"We were desperately waiting for the data from the South Pole Telescope, which—due to extreme weather conditions during the southern hemisphere winter—didn't arrive until six months later,\" recalled Helger Rottmann from the Max Planck Institute.\n\nIt arrived, to be precise, on December 23, 2017.\n\n\"When, a few hours later, we saw that everything was there, it was one hell of a Christmas present,\" Rottmann said.\n\nIt would take another year, however, to piece together the data into an image.\n\n![Coined in the mid-60s by American physicist John Archibald Wheeler, the term \\&quot;black hole\\&quot; refers to a point in space w](https:\/\/scx1.b-cdn.net\/csz\/news\/800a\/2019\/coinedinthem.jpg)\n\nCoined in the mid-60s by American physicist John Archibald Wheeler, the term \"black hole\" refers to a point in space where matter is so compressed as to create a gravity field from which even light cannot escape\n\n\"To be absolutely sure, we did the work four times with four different teams,\" said Gueth.\n\nTeam scientists presenting the findings at a news conference in Brussels were visibly moved.\n\n\"We are looking at a region we have never looked at before, that we cannot really imagine being there,\" said Heino Falcke, chair of the EHT Science Council.\n\n\"It feels like looking at the gates of hell, at the end of space and time –- the event horizon, the point of no return.\"\n\n© 2019 AFP\n\n**Citation**: Astronomers deliver first photo of black hole (2019, April 10) retrieved 9 April 2026 from https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2019-04-astronomers-unveil-photo-black-hole.html\n\nThis document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.","meta_canonical":null}

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Boilerpipe Text	Credit: NSF Astronomers on Wednesday unveiled the first photo of a black hole, one of the star-devouring monsters scattered throughout the Universe and obscured by impenetrable shields of gravity. The image of a dark core encircled by a flame-orange halo of white-hot plasma looks like any number of artists' renderings over the last 30 years. But this time, it's the real deal. "The history of science will be divided into the time before the image, and the time after the image," said Michael Kramer, director at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy. Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation called the feat a "huge breakthrough for humanity." The supermassive black hole immortalised by a far-flung network of radio telescopes is 50 million lightyears away at the centre of a galaxy known as M87. "It's a distance that we could have barely imagined," Frederic Gueth, an astronomer at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and co-author of studies detailing the findings, told AFP. Most speculation had centred on the other candidate targeted by the Event Horizon Telescope: Sagittarius A, a closer but smaller black hole at the centre of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Locking down an image of M87's supermassive black hole at such distance is comparable to photographing a pebble on the Moon, the scientists said. It was also very much a team effort. "Instead of constructing a giant telescope that would collapse under its own weight, we combined many observatories," Michael Bremer, an astronomer at the Institute for Millimetric Radio Astronomy (IRAM) in Grenoble, told AFP. Earth in a thimble Over several days in April 2017, eight radio telescopes in Hawaii, Arizona, Spain, Mexico, Chile, and the South Pole zeroed in on Sag A and M87. Knitted together, they formed a virtual observatory some 12,000 kilometres across—roughly the diameter of Earth. 00:00 00:00 The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) -- a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration -- was designed to capture images of a black hole. Today, in coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers reveal that they have succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow.For more multimedia, visit NSF.gov/blackhole, including text-free versions of all images. Credit: NSF "The data is like an incomplete puzzle set," said team member Monika Moscibrodzka, an astronomer at Radboud University. "We only see pieces of the real true image, and then we have to fill in the gaps of the missing pieces." In the end, M87 was more photogenic. Like a fidgety child, Sag A* was too "active" to capture a clear picture, the scientists said. "What we see in the image is the shadow of the black hole's rim—known as the event horizon, or the point of no return—set against the luminous accretion disk," Gueth told AFP. The unprecedented image—so often imagined in science and science fiction —- has been analysed in six studies co-authored by 200 experts from 60-odd institutions and published Wednesday in Astrophysical Journal Letters . "I never thought that I would see a real one in my lifetime," said CNRS astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Luminet, author in 1979 of the first digital simulation of a black hole. Coined in the mid-60s by US physicist John Archibald Wheeler, the term "black hole" refers to a point in space where matter is so compressed as to create a gravity field from which even light cannot escape. 00:00 00:00 The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) -- a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration -- was designed to capture images of a black hole. For more multimedia, visit NSF.gov/blackhole. Credit: NSF The more mass, the bigger the hole. At the same scale of compression, Earth would fit inside a thimble. A successful outcome depended in part on the vagaries of weather during the April 2017 observation period. "For everything to work, we needed to have clear visibility at every (telescope) location worldwide", said IRAM scientist Pablo Torne, recalling collective tension, fatigue and, finally, relief. 'Hell of a Christmas present' Torne was at the controls of the Pico Veleta telescope in Spain's Sierra Madre mountains. After that, is was eight months of nail-biting while scientists at MIT Haystack Observatory in Massachusetts and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn crunched the data. The Event Horizon Telescope—a network of eight radio telescopes across the globe—gathered data to generate the first image of a black hole some 50 million lightyears from Earth The Universe is filled with electromagnetic "noise", and there was no guarantee M87's faint signals could be extracted from a mountain of data so voluminous it could not be delivered via the Internet. There was at least one glitch. "We were desperately waiting for the data from the South Pole Telescope, which—due to extreme weather conditions during the southern hemisphere winter—didn't arrive until six months later," recalled Helger Rottmann from the Max Planck Institute. It arrived, to be precise, on December 23, 2017. "When, a few hours later, we saw that everything was there, it was one hell of a Christmas present," Rottmann said. It would take another year, however, to piece together the data into an image. Coined in the mid-60s by American physicist John Archibald Wheeler, the term "black hole" refers to a point in space where matter is so compressed as to create a gravity field from which even light cannot escape "To be absolutely sure, we did the work four times with four different teams," said Gueth. Team scientists presenting the findings at a news conference in Brussels were visibly moved. "We are looking at a region we have never looked at before, that we cannot really imagine being there," said Heino Falcke, chair of the EHT Science Council. "It feels like looking at the gates of hell, at the end of space and time –- the event horizon, the point of no return." © 2019 AFP Citation : Astronomers deliver first photo of black hole (2019, April 10) retrieved 9 April 2026 from https://phys.org/news/2019-04-astronomers-unveil-photo-black-hole.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
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[Home](https://phys.org/) 2. [Astronomy & Space](https://phys.org/space-news/) 3. [Astronomy](https://phys.org/space-news/astronomy/) * April 10, 2019 # Astronomers deliver first photo of black hole [Add as preferred source](https://google.com/preferences/source?q=https%3A%2F%2Fphys.org%2F) * ![Astronomers deliver first photo of black hole](https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/800a/2019/5caded214d11e.jpg) Credit: NSF Astronomers on Wednesday unveiled the first photo of a black hole, one of the star-devouring monsters scattered throughout the Universe and obscured by impenetrable shields of gravity. The image of a dark core encircled by a flame-orange halo of white-hot plasma looks like any number of artists' renderings over the last 30 years. But this time, it's the real deal. "The history of science will be divided into the time before the image, and the time after the image," said Michael Kramer, director at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy. Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation called the feat a "huge breakthrough for humanity." The supermassive black hole immortalised by a far-flung network of radio telescopes is 50 million lightyears away at the centre of a galaxy known as M87. "It's a distance that we could have barely imagined," Frederic Gueth, an astronomer at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and co-author of studies detailing the findings, told AFP. Most speculation had centred on the other candidate targeted by the Event Horizon Telescope: Sagittarius A\, a closer but smaller black hole at the centre of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Locking down an image of M87's supermassive black hole at such distance is comparable to photographing a pebble on the Moon, the scientists said. It was also very much a team effort. "Instead of constructing a giant telescope that would collapse under its own weight, we combined many observatories," Michael Bremer, an astronomer at the Institute for Millimetric Radio Astronomy (IRAM) in Grenoble, told AFP. ## Earth in a thimble Over several days in April 2017, eight radio telescopes in Hawaii, Arizona, Spain, Mexico, Chile, and the South Pole zeroed in on Sag A\ and M87. Knitted together, they formed a virtual observatory some 12,000 kilometres across—roughly the diameter of Earth. PausePlay % buffered 00:00 00:00 UnmuteMute Disable captionsEnable captions Settings CaptionsDisabled Quality0 SpeedNormal CaptionsGo back to previous menu QualityGo back to previous menu SpeedGo back to previous menu 0\.5× 0\.75× Normal 1\.25× 1\.5× 1\.75× 2× 4× PIP Exit fullscreenEnter fullscreen Play The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) -- a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration -- was designed to capture images of a black hole. Today, in coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers reveal that they have succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow.For more multimedia, visit NSF.gov/blackhole, including text-free versions of all images. Credit: NSF "The data is like an incomplete puzzle set," said team member Monika Moscibrodzka, an astronomer at Radboud University. "We only see pieces of the real true image, and then we have to fill in the gaps of the missing pieces." In the end, M87 was more photogenic. Like a fidgety child, Sag A\* was too "active" to capture a clear picture, the scientists said. "What we see in the image is the shadow of the black hole's rim—known as the event horizon, or the point of no return—set against the luminous accretion disk," Gueth told AFP. The unprecedented image—so often imagined in science and science fiction —- has been analysed in six studies co-authored by 200 experts from 60-odd institutions and published Wednesday in Astrophysical Journal Letters. "I never thought that I would see a real one in my lifetime," said CNRS astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Luminet, author in 1979 of the first digital simulation of a black hole. Coined in the mid-60s by US physicist John Archibald Wheeler, the term "black hole" refers to a point in space where matter is so compressed as to create a gravity field from which even light cannot escape. PausePlay % buffered 00:00 00:00 UnmuteMute Disable captionsEnable captions Settings CaptionsDisabled Quality0 SpeedNormal CaptionsGo back to previous menu QualityGo back to previous menu SpeedGo back to previous menu 0\.5× 0\.75× Normal 1\.25× 1\.5× 1\.75× 2× 4× PIP Exit fullscreenEnter fullscreen Play The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) -- a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration -- was designed to capture images of a black hole. For more multimedia, visit NSF.gov/blackhole. Credit: NSF The more mass, the bigger the hole. At the same scale of compression, Earth would fit inside a thimble. A successful outcome depended in part on the vagaries of weather during the April 2017 observation period. "For everything to work, we needed to have clear visibility at every (telescope) location worldwide", said IRAM scientist Pablo Torne, recalling collective tension, fatigue and, finally, relief. Discover the latest in science, tech, and space with over 100,000 subscribers who rely on Phys.org for daily insights. Sign up for our [free newsletter](https://sciencex.com/help/newsletter/) and get updates on breakthroughs, innovations, and research that matter—daily or weekly. ## 'Hell of a Christmas present' Torne was at the controls of the Pico Veleta telescope in Spain's Sierra Madre mountains. After that, is was eight months of nail-biting while scientists at MIT Haystack Observatory in Massachusetts and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn crunched the data. ![The Event Horizon Telescope—a network of eight radio telescopes across the globe—gathered data to generate the first image of a ](https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/800a/2019/theeventhori.jpg) The Event Horizon Telescope—a network of eight radio telescopes across the globe—gathered data to generate the first image of a black hole some 50 million lightyears from Earth The Universe is filled with electromagnetic "noise", and there was no guarantee M87's faint signals could be extracted from a mountain of data so voluminous it could not be delivered via the Internet. There was at least one glitch. "We were desperately waiting for the data from the South Pole Telescope, which—due to extreme weather conditions during the southern hemisphere winter—didn't arrive until six months later," recalled Helger Rottmann from the Max Planck Institute. It arrived, to be precise, on December 23, 2017. "When, a few hours later, we saw that everything was there, it was one hell of a Christmas present," Rottmann said. It would take another year, however, to piece together the data into an image. ![Coined in the mid-60s by American physicist John Archibald Wheeler, the term \"black hole\" refers to a point in space w](https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/800a/2019/coinedinthem.jpg) Coined in the mid-60s by American physicist John Archibald Wheeler, the term "black hole" refers to a point in space where matter is so compressed as to create a gravity field from which even light cannot escape "To be absolutely sure, we did the work four times with four different teams," said Gueth. Team scientists presenting the findings at a news conference in Brussels were visibly moved. "We are looking at a region we have never looked at before, that we cannot really imagine being there," said Heino Falcke, chair of the EHT Science Council. "It feels like looking at the gates of hell, at the end of space and time –- the event horizon, the point of no return." ###### More information PAPERS: - [Paper I: The Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole](https://dx.doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ab0ec7) - [Paper II: Array and Instrumentation](https://dx.doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ab0c96) - [Paper III: Data processing and Calibration](https://dx.doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ab0c57) - [Paper IV: Imaging the Central Supermassive Black Hole](https://dx.doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ab0e85) - [Paper V: Physical Origin of the Asymmetric Ring](https://dx.doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ab0f43) - [Paper VI: The Shadow and Mass of the Central Black Hole](https://dx.doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ab1141) © 2019 AFP Citation: Astronomers deliver first photo of black hole (2019, April 10) retrieved 9 April 2026 from https://phys.org/news/2019-04-astronomers-unveil-photo-black-hole.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. 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Readable Markdown	![Astronomers deliver first photo of black hole](https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/800a/2019/5caded214d11e.jpg) Credit: NSF Astronomers on Wednesday unveiled the first photo of a black hole, one of the star-devouring monsters scattered throughout the Universe and obscured by impenetrable shields of gravity. The image of a dark core encircled by a flame-orange halo of white-hot plasma looks like any number of artists' renderings over the last 30 years. But this time, it's the real deal. "The history of science will be divided into the time before the image, and the time after the image," said Michael Kramer, director at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy. Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation called the feat a "huge breakthrough for humanity." The supermassive black hole immortalised by a far-flung network of radio telescopes is 50 million lightyears away at the centre of a galaxy known as M87. "It's a distance that we could have barely imagined," Frederic Gueth, an astronomer at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and co-author of studies detailing the findings, told AFP. Most speculation had centred on the other candidate targeted by the Event Horizon Telescope: Sagittarius A\, a closer but smaller black hole at the centre of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Locking down an image of M87's supermassive black hole at such distance is comparable to photographing a pebble on the Moon, the scientists said. It was also very much a team effort. "Instead of constructing a giant telescope that would collapse under its own weight, we combined many observatories," Michael Bremer, an astronomer at the Institute for Millimetric Radio Astronomy (IRAM) in Grenoble, told AFP. ## Earth in a thimble Over several days in April 2017, eight radio telescopes in Hawaii, Arizona, Spain, Mexico, Chile, and the South Pole zeroed in on Sag A\ and M87. Knitted together, they formed a virtual observatory some 12,000 kilometres across—roughly the diameter of Earth. 00:00 00:00 The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) -- a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration -- was designed to capture images of a black hole. Today, in coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers reveal that they have succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow.For more multimedia, visit NSF.gov/blackhole, including text-free versions of all images. Credit: NSF "The data is like an incomplete puzzle set," said team member Monika Moscibrodzka, an astronomer at Radboud University. "We only see pieces of the real true image, and then we have to fill in the gaps of the missing pieces." In the end, M87 was more photogenic. Like a fidgety child, Sag A\* was too "active" to capture a clear picture, the scientists said. "What we see in the image is the shadow of the black hole's rim—known as the event horizon, or the point of no return—set against the luminous accretion disk," Gueth told AFP. The unprecedented image—so often imagined in science and science fiction —- has been analysed in six studies co-authored by 200 experts from 60-odd institutions and published Wednesday in Astrophysical Journal Letters. "I never thought that I would see a real one in my lifetime," said CNRS astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Luminet, author in 1979 of the first digital simulation of a black hole. Coined in the mid-60s by US physicist John Archibald Wheeler, the term "black hole" refers to a point in space where matter is so compressed as to create a gravity field from which even light cannot escape. 00:00 00:00 The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) -- a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration -- was designed to capture images of a black hole. For more multimedia, visit NSF.gov/blackhole. Credit: NSF The more mass, the bigger the hole. At the same scale of compression, Earth would fit inside a thimble. A successful outcome depended in part on the vagaries of weather during the April 2017 observation period. "For everything to work, we needed to have clear visibility at every (telescope) location worldwide", said IRAM scientist Pablo Torne, recalling collective tension, fatigue and, finally, relief. ## 'Hell of a Christmas present' Torne was at the controls of the Pico Veleta telescope in Spain's Sierra Madre mountains. After that, is was eight months of nail-biting while scientists at MIT Haystack Observatory in Massachusetts and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn crunched the data. ![The Event Horizon Telescope—a network of eight radio telescopes across the globe—gathered data to generate the first image of a ](https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/800a/2019/theeventhori.jpg) The Event Horizon Telescope—a network of eight radio telescopes across the globe—gathered data to generate the first image of a black hole some 50 million lightyears from Earth The Universe is filled with electromagnetic "noise", and there was no guarantee M87's faint signals could be extracted from a mountain of data so voluminous it could not be delivered via the Internet. There was at least one glitch. "We were desperately waiting for the data from the South Pole Telescope, which—due to extreme weather conditions during the southern hemisphere winter—didn't arrive until six months later," recalled Helger Rottmann from the Max Planck Institute. It arrived, to be precise, on December 23, 2017. "When, a few hours later, we saw that everything was there, it was one hell of a Christmas present," Rottmann said. It would take another year, however, to piece together the data into an image. ![Coined in the mid-60s by American physicist John Archibald Wheeler, the term \"black hole\" refers to a point in space w](https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/800a/2019/coinedinthem.jpg) Coined in the mid-60s by American physicist John Archibald Wheeler, the term "black hole" refers to a point in space where matter is so compressed as to create a gravity field from which even light cannot escape "To be absolutely sure, we did the work four times with four different teams," said Gueth. Team scientists presenting the findings at a news conference in Brussels were visibly moved. "We are looking at a region we have never looked at before, that we cannot really imagine being there," said Heino Falcke, chair of the EHT Science Council. "It feels like looking at the gates of hell, at the end of space and time –- the event horizon, the point of no return." © 2019 AFP Citation: Astronomers deliver first photo of black hole (2019, April 10) retrieved 9 April 2026 from https://phys.org/news/2019-04-astronomers-unveil-photo-black-hole.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
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