Watch Live: First black hole image? Major discovery to be announced today
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is set to release its first results – tune in wherever you are in the world
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a global effort to capture the first-ever image of a black hole’s environment, is set to release its first results at 13:00 GMT / 9am EDT today and you can watch the event live (above).
Beginning its very first observing run during April 2017, the EHT links up multiple radio telescopes around the world – from the South Pole Telescope in Antarctica to the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy’s Effelsberg 100-metre telescope in Germany – creating a virtual instrument that’s the size of our planet. During its week-long stint, the project has been peering at two massive supermassive black holes – Sagittarius A* at the heart of the Milky Way and into the core of energetic, supermassive elliptical Messier 87 in the constellation of Virgo.
While team members of the ELT haven’t revealed the true nature of the results, the National Science Foundation has stated that the announcement will be ‘groundbreaking’, suggesting that – by the close of today – we could be treated to the very first image of a black hole’s silhouette.
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