Black Hole Team - web, web - Rated 3.4 based on 5 Reviews 'Register page recaptcha not working!, please take a look and fix it. WASHINGTON, D.C. — A global team of astronomers, led by Harvard scientists, has for the first time captured an image of a black hole.
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Image copyright EHT Collaboration Image captionComing soon: Supermassive black hole - the movie. Image copyright Katie Bouman Image captionDr Katie Bouman is one of the scientists who developed the algorithm that pieced together the data from the EHT. Without her contribution the project would not have been possible.A black hole has no colour of course.
But what astronomers can see is the material pouring into it that becomes superheated gas. This gas is thought to change colour as it gets closer to the black hole.
Like the Sun when it sets behind clouds in the evening, light from the superheated material will have to travel through more gas on its way to instruments on Earth. So the effect will be to change the colour and appearance of the material around the black hole.The international consortium expects to add ground-based telescopes in Greenland, France and parts of Africa and has applied for funding from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) to send three small satellites into orbit to supplement the ground-based survey. Media captionProf Heino Falcke: 'We still have to understand how the light is generated'According to Prof Falcke, this will create a super telescope, effectively larger than the Earth, capable of taking razor sharp images of the black hole at the centre of our galaxy.Prof Shep Doleman of Harvard University, US, who is the EHT's project director, said the images and video would enable the team to test Einstein's theories to new limits and unravel how black holes generate light-speed jets that can pierce entire galaxies.' (We plan to) create huge virtual telescopes, and new radio facilities will be built around the globe. The EHT team is just getting started,' he said. Image captionThe eventual EHT array will have 12 widely spaced participating radio facilitiesProf Falcke told BBC News about the EHT consortium's plans as the international team of 347 scientists received a $3m (£2.48m) cash award from the Breakthrough Prize Foundation.Although he first proposed the idea and battled with the help of colleagues to get it funded, he said that the award was a recognition of a global effort by the entire team.'
There have been scientists in Europe, China, South Africa, Japan and Taiwan involved. For me, what was a much larger reward was the overwhelming response across the world from ordinary people who were touched by seeing the image,' he said.' It was not just scientific; it was emotional. One person told me that she was in tears. It was so pleasing to know that everyone was able to appreciate it and celebrate it.'
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