From the excellent Out There series from The New York Times: Black Hole Hunters, the story of the Earth-sized array of observation stations synchronized to capture Sagittarius A*, the astronomical radio source at the galactic center of the Milky Way. From NYT on the Event Horizon Telescope:
“…named after the point of no return in a black hole, its job was to see what has been until now unseeable: an exquisitely small, dark circle of nothing, a tiny shadow in the glow of radiation at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. It is there that astronomers think lurks a supermassive black hole, a trap door into which the equivalent of four million suns has evidently disappeared.”
Related reading: An Earthling’s Guide to Black Holes.
Read more here, and watch more Out There videos on this site or on YouTube.
Watch these next: The Giant Magellan Telescope and Solar System, Milky Way, Laniakea: Our home supercluster.
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