black hole paper presentation

Black Holes

Black holes are some of the most fascinating and mind-bending objects in the cosmos. The very thing that characterizes a black hole also makes it hard to study: its intense gravity. All the mass in a black hole is concentrated in a tiny region, surrounded by a boundary called the “event horizon”. Nothing that crosses that boundary can return to the outside universe, not even light. A black hole itself is invisible.

But astronomers can still observe black holes indirectly by the way their gravity affects stars and pulls matter into orbit. As gas flows around a black hole, it heats up, paradoxically making these invisible objects into some of the brightest things in the entire universe. As a result, we can see some black holes from billions of light-years away. For one large black hole in a nearby galaxy, astronomers even managed to see a ring of light around the event horizon, using a globe-spanning array of powerful telescopes.

Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian scientists participate in many black hole-related projects:

Using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) to capture the first image of a black hole’s “shadow”: the absence of light that marks where the event horizon is located. The EHT is composed of many telescopes working together to create one Earth-sized observatory , all monitoring the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87, leading to the first image ever captured of a black hole. CfA Plays Central Role In Capturing Landmark Black Hole Image

Observing supermassive black holes in other galaxies to understand how they evolve and shape their host galaxies. CfA astronomers use telescopes across the entire spectrum of light, from radio waves to X-rays to gamma rays. A Surprising Blazar Connection Revealed

Studying the infall of matter — called “accretion” — onto black holes, using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes. In addition, CfA researchers use cutting-edge supercomputers to create theoretical models for the disks and jets of matter that black holes create around themselves. Supermassive Black Hole Spins Super-Fast

Hunting for black hole interactions with other astronomical objects. That includes “disruption” events, where black holes tear stars or other objects apart, creating bursts of intense light. Black Hole Meal Sets Record for Length and Size

Observing clusters of stars to find intermediate mass black holes, and modeling how they shape their environments. A Middleweight Black Hole is Hiding at the Center of a Giant Star Cluster

Hunting for and characterizing stellar mass black holes, which can include information about their birth process and evolution. NASA's Chandra Adds to Black Hole Birth Announcement

The Varieties of Black Holes

Black holes come in three categories:

Stellar Mass Black Holes are born from the death of stars much more massive than the Sun. When some of these stars run out of the nuclear fuel that makes them shine, their cores collapse into black holes under their own gravity. Other stellar mass black holes form from the collision of neutron stars , such as the ones first detected by LIGO and Virgo in 2017. These are probably the most common black holes in the cosmos, but are hard to detect unless they have an ordinary star for a companion. When that happens, the black hole can strip material from the star, causing the gas to heat up and glow brightly in X-rays.

Supermassive Black Holes are the monsters of the universe, living at the centers of nearly every galaxy. They range in mass from 100,000 to billions of times the mass of the Sun, far too massive to be born from a single star. The Milky Way’s black hole is about 4 million times the Sun’s mass, putting it in the middle of the pack. In the form of quasars and other “active” galaxies , these black holes can shine brightly enough to be seen from billions of light-years away. Understanding when these black holes formed and how they grow is a major area of research. Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian scientists are part of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, which captured the first-ever image of the black hole: the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87.

Intermediate Mass Black Holes are the most mysterious, since we’ve hardly seen any of them yet. They weigh 100 to 10,000 times the mass of the Sun, putting them between stellar and supermassive black holes. We don’t know exactly how many of these are, and like supermassive black holes, we don’t fully understand how they’re born or grow. However, studying them could tell us a lot about how the most supermassive black holes came to be.

Black holes can seem bizarre and incomprehensible, but in truth they’re remarkably understandable. Despite not being able to see black holes directly, we know quite a bit about them. They are …

Simple . All three black hole types can be described by just two observable quantities: their mass and how fast they spin. That’s much simpler than a star, for example, which in addition to mass is a product of its unique history and evolution , including its chemical makeup. Mass and spin tell us everything we need to know about a black hole: it “forgets” everything that went into making it. Those two quantities determine how big the event horizon is, and the way gravity affects any matter falling onto the black hole.

Compact . Black holes are tiny compared to their mass. The event horizon of a black hole the mass of the Sun would be no more than 6 kilometers across, and the faster it spins, the smaller that size is. Even a supermassive black hole would fit easily inside our Solar System.

Powerful . The combination of large mass and small size results in very strong gravity. This gravity is strong enough to pull a star apart if it gets too close, producing powerful bursts of light. A supermassive black hole heats gas falling onto it to temperatures of millions of degrees, making it glow brightly enough in X-rays and other types of radiation to be seen across the universe.

Very common . From theoretical calculations based on observations, astronomers think the Milky Way might have as many as a hundred million black holes, most of which are stellar mass. And with at least one supermassive black hole in most galaxies, there could be hundreds of billions of supermassive black holes in the observable universe.

Very important . Black holes have a reputation for eating everything that comes by, but they turn out to be messy eaters. A lot of stuff that falls toward a black hole gets jetted away, thanks to the complicated churning of gas near the event horizon. These jets and outflows of gas called “winds” spread atoms throughout the galaxy, and can either boost or throttle the birth of new stars, depending on other factors. That means supermassive black holes play an important role in the life of galaxies, even far beyond the black hole’s gravitational pull.

And yes, mysterious . Along with astronomers, physicists are interested in black holes because they’re a laboratory for “quantum gravity”. Black holes are described by Albert Einstein’s general relativity, which is our modern theory of gravity, but the other forces of nature are described by quantum physics. So far, nobody has developed a complete quantum gravity theory, but we already know black holes will be an important test of any proposed theory.

The first image of a black hole in human history, captured by the Event Horizon Telescope, showing light emitted by matter as it swirls under the influence of intense gravity. This black hole is 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun and resides at the center of the galaxy M87.

• What do black holes look like?
• What happens to space time when cosmic objects collide?
• The Energetic Universe
• The Milky Way Galaxy
• Extragalactic Astronomy
• Stellar Astronomy
• Theoretical Astrophysics
• Einstein's Theory of Gravitation
• Radio and Geoastronomy

Related News

Astronomers unveil strong magnetic fields spiraling at the edge of milky way’s central black hole, black hole fashions stellar beads on a string, m87* one year later: proof of a persistent black hole shadow, unexpectedly massive black holes dominate small galaxies in the distant universe, unveiling black hole spins using polarized radio glasses, a supermassive black hole’s strong magnetic fields are revealed in a new light, nasa telescopes discover record-breaking black hole, new horizons in physics breakthrough prize awarded to cfa astrophysicist, cfa selects contractor for next generation event horizon telescope antennas, sheperd doeleman awarded the 2023 georges lemaître international prize, dasch (digital access to a sky century @ harvard), sensing the dynamic universe, champ (chandra multiwavelength project) and champlane (chandra multiwavelength plane) survey, telescopes and instruments, einstein observatory, event horizon telescope (eht), large aperture experiment to explore the dark ages (leda), the greenland telescope, very energetic radiation imaging telescope array system (veritas).

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Science Subject for High School: Black Hole

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Black Hole 101

At the center of our galaxy, a supermassive black hole churns. Learn about the types of black holes, how they form, and how scientists discovered these invisible, yet extraordinary objects in our universe.

Earth Science, Astronomy

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Black Holes

• Released Wednesday, April 10th, 2019
• Updated Tuesday, May 7th, 2024 at 12:00AM

This gallery gathers together visualizations and narrated videos about black holes. A black hole is a celestial object whose gravity is so intense that even light cannot escape it. Astronomers observe two main types of black holes. Stellar-mass black holes contain three to dozens of times the mass of our Sun. They form when the cores of very massive stars run out of fuel and collapse under their own weight, compressing large amounts of matter into a tiny space. Supermassive black holes, with masses up to billions of times the Sun’s, can be found at the centers of most big galaxies. Although a black hole does not emit light, matter falling toward it collects in a hot, glowing accretion disk that astronomers can detect.

Most Recent Black Hole Stories

Primordial black holes, nasa black hole visualization takes viewers beyond the brink, nasa animation sizes up the universe’s biggest black holes, nasa's black hole orrery, black hole week, nasa's field guide to black holes, m87: telescopes unite in unprecedented observations of famous black hole, nasa visualization probes the doubly warped world of binary black holes, hubble uncovers concentration of small black holes, swift links neutrino to star-destroying black hole, black hole accretion disk visualization, nasa's guide to black hole safety, mysterious ‘cow’ blast studied with nasa telescopes, zoom in on galaxy m87, new simulation sheds light on spiraling supermassive black holes, nasa's fermi links cosmic neutrino to monster black hole, star gives birth to possible black hole in hubble and spitzer images, swift charts a star's 'death spiral' into black hole, hubble detects a rogue supermassive black hole, blazar animations, milky way center in multiple wavelengths, spiral galaxy m106, swift, tess catch eruptions from an active galaxy, significant black hole stories, nicer charts the area around a new black hole, massive black hole shreds passing star, x-ray echoes map a 'killer' black hole, nasa's rxte satellite catches the beat of a midsize black hole, turning black holes into dark matter labs, neutron stars rip each other apart to form black hole, nasa-led study explains how black holes shine in hard x-rays, radio telescopes capture best-ever snapshot of a black hole's jets, simulations uncover 'flashy' secrets of merging black holes, the cloudy cores of active galaxies, briefing materials: nasa missions explore record-setting cosmic blast.

Black Hole Anatomy

Anatomy of a Black Hole

Event horizon.

This is what makes a black hole black. We can think of the event horizon as the black hole’s surface. Inside this boundary, the velocity needed to escape the black hole exceeds the speed of light, which is as fast as anything can go. So whatever passes into the event horizon is doomed to stay inside it – even light. Because light can’t escape, black holes themselves neither emit nor reflect it, and nothing about what happens within them can reach an outside observer. But astronomers can observe black holes thanks to light emitted by surrounding matter that hasn’t yet dipped into the event horizon.

Accretion Disk

The main light source from a black hole is a structure called an accretion disk. Black holes grow by consuming matter, a process scientists call accretion, and by merging with other black holes. A stellar-mass black hole paired with a star may pull gas from it, and a supermassive black hole does the same from stars that stray too close. The gas settles into a hot, bright, rapidly spinning disk. Matter gradually works its way from the outer part of the disk to its inner edge, where it falls into the event horizon. Isolated black holes that have consumed the matter surrounding them do not possess an accretion disk and can be very difficult to find and study.

If we could see it up close, we’d find that the accretion disk has a funny shape when viewed from most angles. This is because the black hole’s gravitational field warps space-time, the fabric of the universe, and light must follow this distorted path. Astronomers call this process gravitational lensing. Light coming to us from the top of the disk behind the black hole appears to form into a hump above it. Light from beneath the far side of the disk takes a different path, creating another hump below. The humps’ sizes and shapes change as we view them from different angles, and we see no humps at all when seeing the disk exactly face on.

Event Horizon Shadow

The event horizon captures any light passing through it, and the distorted space-time around it causes light to be redirected through gravitational lensing. These two effects produce a dark zone that astronomers refer to as the event horizon shadow, which is roughly twice as big as the black hole’s actual surface.

Photon Sphere

From every viewing angle, thin rings of light appear at the edge of the black hole shadow. These rings are really multiple, highly distorted images of the accretion disk. Here, light from the disk actually orbits the black hole multiple times before escaping to us. Rings closer to the black hole become thinner and fainter.

Doppler Beaming

Viewed from most angles, one side of the accretion disk appears brighter than the other. Near the black hole, the disk spins so fast that an effect of Einstein’s theory of relativity becomes apparent. Light streaming from the part of the disk spinning toward us becomes brighter and bluer, while light from the side the disk rotating away from us becomes dimmer and redder. This is the optical equivalent of an everyday acoustic phenomenon, where the pitch and volume of a sound – such as a siren – rise and fall as the source approaches and passes by. The black hole’s particle jets show off this effect even more dramatically.

It’s been called one of the most extreme physical environments in the universe. Strong magnetic fields threading the inner accretion disk extend out of it, creating a tenuous, turbulent, billion-degree cloud. Particles in the corona orbit the black hole at velocities approaching the speed of light. It’s a source of X-rays with much higher energies than those emanating from the accretion disk, but astronomers are still trying to figure out its extent, shape, and other characteristics.

Particle Jets

In black holes of all sizes, something strange can occur near the inner edge of the accretion disk. A small amount of material heading toward the black hole may suddenly become rerouted into a pair of jets that blast away from it in opposite directions. These jets fire out particles at close to the speed of light, but astronomers don’t fully understand how they work. The jets from supermassive black holes – the type found in the centers of most big galaxies – can reach lengths of hundreds of thousands of light-years. In cases where the jets happen to angle into our line of sight, we may only easily detect the one firing toward us due to Doppler beaming. This process makes the near jet considerably brighter, but greatly dims the rear jet.

Singularity

General relativity predicts that the very center of a black hole contains a point where matter is crushed to infinite density. It’s the final destination for anything falling into the event horizon. The singularity may be either a physical structure or a purely mathematical one, but right now astronomers don’t know which is true. The prediction of a singularity may signal the limits of relativity, where quantum effects not included in the theory become important in a more complete description of gravity.

Discover More Topics From NASA

Black holes: Everything you need to know

These gluttonous beasts are some of the most fascinating objects in space.

• Black hole FAQs

How many black holes are there?

Black hole images, black hole facts, additional resources.

Black holes are some of the strangest and most fascinating objects in space. They're extremely dense, with such strong gravitational attraction that not even light can escape their grasp. 

The Milky Way could contain over 100 million black holes, though detecting these gluttonous beasts is very difficult. At the heart of the Milky Way lies a supermassive black hole — Sagittarius A* . The colossal structure is about 4 million times the mass of the sun and lies approximately 26,000 light-years away from Earth , according to a statement from NASA .

The first image of a black hole was captured in 2019 by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration. The striking photo of the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy 55 million light-years from Earth thrilled scientists around the world. 

Related: White holes: What we know about black holes' neglected twins  

Black hole FAQs answered by an expert

We asked theoretical astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan a few commonly asked questions about black holes. 

Chair of the Department of Astronomy, Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor of Astronomy and Professor of Physics, Yale University.

How do black holes form?

Black holes are expected to form via two distinct channels. According to the first pathway, they are stellar corpses, so they form when massive stars die. Stars whose birth masses are above roughly 8 to 10 times mass of our sun, when they exhaust all their fuel — their hydrogen — they explode and die leaving behind a very compact dense object, a black hole. The resulting black hole that is left behind is referred to as a stellar mass black hole and its mass is of the order of a few times the mass of the sun. 

Not all stars leave behind black holes, stars with lower birth masses leave behind a neutron star or a white dwarf. Another way that black holes form is from the direct collapse of gas, a process that is expected to result in more massive black holes with a mass ranging from 1000 times the mass of the sun up to even 100,000 times the mass of the sun. This channel circumvents the formation of the traditional star, and is believed to operate in the early universe and produce more massive black hole seeds. 

Who discovered black holes?

Black holes were predicted as an exact mathematical solution to Einstein's equations. Einstein's equations describe the shape of space around matter. The theory of general relativity connects the geometry or shape of shape to the detailed distribution of matter. 

The black hole solution was found was by Karl Schwarzschild in 1915, and these regions — black holes — were found to distort space extremally and generate a puncture in the fabric of spacetime. It was unclear at the time if these corresponded to real objects in the universe. Over time, as other end products of stellar death were detected, namely, neutron stars seen as pulsars it became clear that black holes were real and ought to exist. The first detected black hole was Cygnus-X1.

Do black holes die?

Black holes do not die per se, but they are theoretically predicted to eventually slowly evaporate over extremely long time scales. 

Black holes grow by the accretion of matter nearby that is pulled in by their immense gravity. Hawking predicted that black holes could also radiate away energy and shrink very slowly. Quantum theory suggests that there exist virtual particles popping in and out of existence all the time. When this happens, a particle and its companion anti-particle appear. However, they can also recombine and disappear again. When this process occurs near the event horizon of a black hole, strange things can happen. Instead of the particle antiparticle pair existing for a moment and then annihilating each other, one of them can get by gravity and fall into the black hole, while the other particle can fly off into space. Over very long timescales, we are speaking about timescales that are much much longer than the age of our universe, the theory states that this trickle of escaping particles will cause the black hole to slowly evaporate.

Are black holes wormholes?

No black holes are not wormholes. Wormholes can be thought of as tunnels that connect two separate points in space and time. It is believed that the interior of black holes could contain a wormhole, the puncture is spacetime, that could offer a portal to another point in spacetime potentially even in a different universe.

First black hole discovered

Albert Einstein first predicted the existence of black holes in 1916, with his general theory of relativity . The term "black hole" was coined many years later in 1967 by American astronomer John Wheeler. After decades of black holes being known only as theoretical objects. 

The first black hole ever discovered was Cygnus X-1, located within the Milky Way in the constellation of Cygnus, the Swan. Astronomers saw the first signs of the black hole in 1964 when a sounding rocket detected celestial sources of X-rays according to NASA . In 1971, astronomers determined that the X-rays were coming from a bright blue star orbiting a strange dark object. It was suggested that the detected X-rays were a result of stellar material being stripped away from the bright star and "gobbled" up by the dark object — an all-consuming black hole.  

According to the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) approximately one out of every thousand stars is massive enough to become a black hole. Since the Milky Way contains over 100 billion stats, our home galaxy must harbor some 100 million black holes. 

Though detecting black holes is a difficult task and estimates from NASA suggest there could be as many as 10 million to a billion stellar black holes in the Milky Way. 

The closest black hole to Earth is dubbed " The Unicorn " and is situated approximately 1,500 light-years away. The nickname has a double meaning. Not only does the black hole candidate reside in the constellation Monoceros ("the unicorn"), its incredibly low mass — about three times that of the sun — makes it nearly one of a kind.

Related: How many black holes are there in the universe?

In 2019 the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration released the first image ever recorded of a black hole . The EHT saw the black hole in the center of galaxy M87 while the telescope was examining the event horizon or the area past which nothing can escape from a black hole. The image maps the sudden loss of photons (particles of light). It also opens up a whole new area of research in black holes, now that astronomers know what a black hole looks like.

In 2021, astronomers revealed a new view of the giant black hole at the center of M87, showing what the colossal structure looks like in polarized light. As polarized light waves have a different orientation and brightness compared to unpolarized light, the new image shows the black hole in even more detail. Polarization is a signature of magnetic fields and the image makes it clear that the black hole's ring is magnetized. 

In May 2022, scientists revealed the historic first image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy — Sagitarrius A* .

Related: The 1st photo of the Milky Way's monster black hole explained in images

What do black holes look like?

Black holes have three "layers": the outer and inner event horizon, and the singularity.

The event horizon of a black hole is the boundary around the mouth of the black hole, past which light cannot escape. Once a particle crosses the event horizon, it cannot leave. Gravity is constant across the event horizon.

The inner region of a black hole, where the object's mass lies, is known as its singularity , the single point in space-time where the mass of the black hole is concentrated.

Scientists can't see black holes the way they can see stars and other objects in space. Instead, astronomers must rely on detecting the radiation black holes emit as dust and gas are drawn into the dense creatures. But supermassive black holes , lying in the center of a galaxy, may become shrouded by the thick dust and gas around them, which can block the telltale emissions.

— What happens at the center of a black hole?

— Where do black holes lead to?

— What is the biggest thing in the universe?  

Sometimes, as matter is drawn toward a black hole, it ricochets off the event horizon and is hurled outward, rather than being tugged into the maw. Bright jets of material traveling at near-relativistic speeds are created. Although the black hole remains unseen, these powerful jets can be viewed from great distances.

The EHT's image of a black hole in M87 (released in 2019) was an extraordinary effort, requiring two years of research even after the images were taken. That's because the collaboration of telescopes, which stretches across many observatories worldwide, produces an astounding amount of data that is too large to transfer via the internet. 

With time, researchers expect to image other black holes and build up a repository of what the objects look like. The next target is likely Sagittarius A*, which is the black hole in the center of our own Milky Way galaxy. Sagittarius A* is intriguing because it is quieter than expected, which may be due to magnetic fields smothering its activity , a 2019 study reported. Another study that year showed that a cool gas halo surrounds Sagittarius A* , which gives unprecedented insight into what the environment around a black hole looks like.

Types of black holes

So far, astronomers have identified three types of black holes: stellar black holes, supermassive black holes and intermediate black holes. 

Stellar black holes — small but deadly 

When a star burns through the last of its fuel, the object may collapse, or fall into itself. For smaller stars (those up to about three times the sun 's mass), the new core will become a neutron star or a white dwarf . But when a larger star collapses, it continues to compress and creates a stellar black hole.

Black holes formed by the collapse of individual stars are relatively small but incredibly dense. One of these objects packs more than three times the mass of the sun into the diameter of a city. This leads to a crazy amount of gravitational force pulling on objects around the object. Stellar black holes then consume the dust and gas from their surrounding galaxies, which keeps them growing in size.

Supermassive black holes — the birth of giants 

Small black holes populate the universe, but their cousins, supermassive black holes, dominate. These enormous black holes are millions or even billions of times as massive as the sun but are about the same size in diameter. Such black holes are thought to lie at the center of pretty much every galaxy, including the Milky Way.

Scientists aren't certain how such large black holes spawn. Once these giants have formed, they gather mass from the dust and gas around them, material that is plentiful in the center of galaxies, allowing them to grow to even more enormous sizes.

Supermassive black holes may be the result of hundreds or thousands of tiny black holes that merge. Large gas clouds could also be responsible, collapsing together and rapidly accreting mass. A third option is the collapse of a stellar cluster, a group of stars all falling together. Fourth, supermassive black holes could arise from large clusters of dark matter. This is a substance that we can observe through its gravitational effect on other objects; however, we don't know what dark matter is composed of because it does not emit light and cannot be directly observed.

Intermediate black holes 

Scientists once thought that black holes came in only small and large sizes, but research has revealed the possibility that midsize, or intermediate, black holes (IMBHs) could exist. Such bodies could form when stars in a cluster collide in a chain reaction. Several of these IMBHs forming in the same region could then eventually fall together in the center of a galaxy and create a supermassive black hole.

In 2014, astronomers found what appeared to be an intermediate-mass black hole in the arm of a spiral galaxy . And in 2021 astronomers took advantage of an ancient gamma-ray burst to detect one.

"Astronomers have been looking very hard for these medium-sized black holes," study co-author Tim Roberts, of the University of Durham in the United Kingdom, said in a statement . "There have been hints that they exist, but IMBHs have been acting like a long-lost relative that isn't interested in being found."

Research, from 2018 , suggested that these IMBHs may exist in the heart of dwarf galaxies (or very small galaxies). Observations of 10 such galaxies (five of which were previously unknown to science before this latest survey) revealed X-ray activity — common in black holes — suggesting the presence of black holes of from 36,000 to 316,000 solar masses. The information came from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which examines about 1 million galaxies and can detect the kind of light often observed coming from black holes that are picking up nearby debris. 

Binary black holes: double trouble  

In 2015, astronomers using the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected gravitational waves from merging stellar black holes.

"We have further confirmation of the existence of stellar-mass black holes that are larger than 20 solar masses — these are objects we didn't know existed before LIGO detected them," David Shoemaker, the spokesperson for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC), said in a statement . LIGO's observations also provide insights into the direction a black hole spins. As two black holes spiral around one another, they can spin in the same direction or the opposite direction.

There are two theories on how binary black holes form. The first suggests that the two black holes in a binary form at about the same time, from two stars that were born together and died explosively at about the same time. The companion stars would have had the same spin orientation as one another, so the two black holes left behind would as well.

Under the second model, black holes in a stellar cluster sink to the center of the cluster and pair up. These companions would have random spin orientations compared to one another according to LIGO Scientific Collaboration . LIGO's observations of companion black holes with different spin orientations provide stronger evidence for this formation theory.

"We're starting to gather real statistics on binary black hole systems," said LIGO scientist Keita Kawabe of Caltech, who is based at the LIGO Hanford Observatory. "That's interesting because some models of black hole binary formation are somewhat favored over the others even now, and in the future, we can further narrow this down."

• If you fell into a black hole, theory has long suggested that gravity would stretch you out like spaghetti, though your death would come before you reached the singularity. But a  2012 study published in the journal Nature  suggested that quantum effects would cause the event horizon to act much like a wall of fire, which would instantly burn you to death.
• Black holes don't suck. Suction is caused by pulling something into a vacuum, which the massive black hole definitely is not. Instead, objects fall into them just as they fall toward anything that exerts gravity, like the Earth.
• The first object considered to be a black hole is  Cygnus X-1 . Cygnus X-1 was the subject of a 1974 friendly wager between  Stephen Hawking  and fellow physicist  Kip Thorne , with Hawking betting that the source was not a black hole. In 1990, Hawking conceded defeat.
• Miniature black holes may have formed immediately after the Big Bang . Rapidly expanding space may have squeezed some regions into tiny, dense black holes less massive than the sun.
• If a star passes too close to a black hole, the star can be  torn apart .
• Astronomers estimate that the Milky Way has anywhere from 10 million to 1 billion stellar black holes, with masses roughly three times that of the sun.
• Black holes remain terrific fodder for science fiction books and movies. Check out the movie " Interstellar ," which relied heavily on Thorne to incorporate science. Thorne's work with the movie's special effects team led to scientists'  improved understanding of how distant stars might appear when seen near a fast-spinning black hole.

Dive deeper into the mystery of black holes with NASA Science. Watch videos and read more about black holes from NASA's Hubblesite. Discover more about black holes with the National Science Foundation.  

Bibliography

Hubblesite: Black holes: Gravity's relentless pull interactive : Encyclopedia. STScI Home. Retrieved May 6, 2022.

NASA. Imagine the universe! NASA. Retrieved May 6, 2022.

Boen, B. ( 2013, August 29 ). Supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. NASA. Retrieved May 6, 2022.

NASA's Chandra Finds Intriguing Member of Black Hole Family Tree. Chandra X-ray Observatory. (2015, February 25). Retrieved May 6, 2022.

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Nola Taylor Tillman is a contributing writer for Space.com. She loves all things space and astronomy-related, and enjoys the opportunity to learn more. She has a Bachelor’s degree in English and Astrophysics from Agnes Scott college and served as an intern at Sky & Telescope magazine. In her free time, she homeschools her four children. Follow her on Twitter at @NolaTRedd

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What are black holes.

Francis Reddy

A black hole is an astronomical object with a gravitational pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape it. A black hole’s “surface,” called its event horizon, defines the boundary where the velocity needed to escape exceeds the speed of light, which is the speed limit of the cosmos. Matter and radiation fall in, but they can’t get out.

Two main classes of black holes have been extensively observed. Stellar-mass black holes with three to dozens of times the Sun’s mass are spread throughout our Milky Way galaxy, while supermassive monsters weighing 100,000 to billions of solar masses are found in the centers of most big galaxies, ours included.

Astronomers had long suspected an in-between class called intermediate-mass black holes, weighing 100 to more than 10,000 solar masses. While a handful of candidates have been identified with indirect evidence, the most convincing example to date came on May 21, 2019, when the  National Science Foundation’s   Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) , located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington, detected gravitational waves from a merger of two stellar-mass black holes. This event, dubbed GW190521, resulted in a black hole weighing 142 Suns.

A stellar-mass black hole forms when a star with more than 20 solar masses exhausts the nuclear fuel in its core and collapses under its own weight. The collapse triggers a supernova explosion that blows off the star’s outer layers. But if the crushed core contains more than about three times the Sun’s mass, no known force can stop its collapse to a black hole. The origin of supermassive black holes is poorly understood, but we know they exist from the very earliest days of a galaxy’s lifetime.

Once born, black holes can grow by accreting matter that falls into them, including gas stripped from neighboring stars and even other black holes.

In 2019, astronomers using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) — an international collaboration that networked eight ground-based radio telescopes into a single Earth-size dish — captured an image of a black hole for the first time. It appears as a dark circle silhouetted by an orbiting disk of hot, glowing matter. The supermassive black hole is located at the heart of a galaxy called M87, located about 55 million light-years away, and weighs more than 6 billion solar masses. Its event horizon extends so far it could encompass much of our solar system out to well beyond the planets.

Another important discovery related to black holes came in 2015 when scientists first detected gravitational waves , ripples in the fabric of space-time predicted a century earlier by Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. LIGO detected the waves from an event called GW150914, where two orbiting black holes spiraled into each other and merged 1.3 billion years ago. Since then, LIGO and other facilities have observed numerous black hole mergers via the gravitational waves they produce.  

These are exciting new methods, but astronomers have been studying black holes through the various forms of light they emit for decades. Although light can’t escape a black hole’s event horizon, the enormous tidal forces in its vicinity cause nearby matter to heat up to millions of degrees and emit radio waves and X-rays. Some of the material orbiting even closer to the event horizon may be hurled out, forming jets of particles moving near the speed of light that emit radio, X-rays and gamma rays. Jets from supermassive black holes can extend hundreds of thousands of light-years into space.

NASA’s Hubble , Chandra , Swift , NuSTAR , and NICER space telescopes, as well as other missions, continue to take the measure of black holes and their environments so we can learn more about these enigmatic objects and their role in the evolution of galaxies and the universe at large.

See our Black Hole Gallery for additional images, simulations and visualizations about black holes.

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Press Release

Astronomers reveal first image of the black hole at the heart of our galaxy.

12 May 2022

Today, at simultaneous press conferences around the world, including at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) headquarters in Germany, astronomers have unveiled the first image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy. This result provides overwhelming evidence that the object is indeed a black hole and yields valuable clues about the workings of such giants, which are thought to reside at the centre of most galaxies. The image was produced by a global research team called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, using observations from a worldwide network of radio telescopes.

The image is a long-anticipated look at the massive object that sits at the very centre of our galaxy. Scientists had previously seen stars orbiting around something invisible, compact, and very massive at the centre of the Milky Way. This strongly suggested that this object — known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*, pronounced "sadge-ay-star") — is a black hole, and today’s image provides the first direct visual evidence of it.  

Although we cannot see the black hole itself, because it is completely dark, glowing gas around it reveals a telltale signature: a dark central region (called a shadow) surrounded by a bright ring-like structure. The new view captures light bent by the powerful gravity of the black hole, which is four million times more massive than our Sun.  

“ We were stunned by how well the size of the ring agreed with predictions from Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, " said EHT Project Scientist Geoffrey Bower from the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, Taipei. " These unprecedented observations have greatly improved our understanding of what happens at the very centre of our galaxy, and offer new insights on how these giant black holes interact with their surroundings. " The EHT team's results are being published today in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters .

Because the black hole is about 27 000 light-years away from Earth, it appears to us to have about the same size in the sky as a doughnut on the Moon. To image it, the team created the powerful EHT, which linked together eight existing radio observatories across the planet to form a single “Earth-sized” virtual telescope [1] . The EHT observed Sgr A* on multiple nights in 2017, collecting data for many hours in a row, similar to using a long exposure time on a camera. 

In addition to other facilities, the EHT network of radio observatories includes the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) in the Atacama Desert in Chile, co-owned and co-operated by ESO on behalf of its member states in Europe. Europe also contributes to the EHT observations with other radio observatories — the IRAM 30-meter telescope in Spain and, since 2018, the NOrthern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA) in France — as well as a supercomputer to combine EHT data hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany. Moreover, Europe contributed with funding to the EHT consortium project through grants by the European Research Council and by the Max Planck Society in Germany. 

“ It is very exciting for ESO to have been playing such an important role in unravelling the mysteries of black holes, and of Sgr A* in particular, over so many years, ” commented ESO Director General Xavier Barcons. “ ESO not only contributed to the EHT observations through the ALMA and APEX facilities but also enabled, with its other observatories in Chile, some of the previous breakthrough observations of the Galactic centre. ” [2]  

The EHT achievement follows the collaboration’s 2019 release of the first image of a black hole, called M87*, at the centre of the more distant Messier 87 galaxy. 

The two black holes look remarkably similar, even though our galaxy’s black hole is more than a thousand times smaller and less massive than M87* [3] . " We have two completely different types of galaxies and two very different black hole masses, but close to the edge of these black holes they look amazingly similar, ” says Sera Markoff, Co-Chair of the EHT Science Council and a professor of theoretical astrophysics at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. " This tells us that General Relativity governs these objects up close, and any differences we see further away must be due to differences in the material that surrounds the black holes. ” 

This achievement was considerably more difficult than for M87*, even though Sgr A* is much closer to us. EHT scientist Chi-kwan (‘CK’) Chan, from Steward Observatory and Department of Astronomy and the Data Science Institute of the University of Arizona, USA, explains: “ The gas in the vicinity of the black holes moves at the same speed — nearly as fast as light — around both Sgr A* and M87*. But where gas takes days to weeks to orbit the larger M87*, in the much smaller Sgr A* it completes an orbit in mere minutes. This means the brightness and pattern of the gas around Sgr A* were changing rapidly as the EHT Collaboration was observing it — a bit like trying to take a clear picture of a puppy quickly chasing its tail. ” 

The researchers had to develop sophisticated new tools that accounted for the gas movement around Sgr A*. While M87* was an easier, steadier target, with nearly all images looking the same, that was not the case for Sgr A*. The image of the Sgr A* black hole is an average of the different images the team extracted, finally revealing the giant lurking at the centre of our galaxy for the first time.  

The effort was made possible through the ingenuity of more than 300 researchers from 80 institutes around the world that together make up the EHT Collaboration. In addition to developing complex tools to overcome the challenges of imaging Sgr A*, the team worked rigorously for five years, using supercomputers to combine and analyse their data, all while compiling an unprecedented library of simulated black holes to compare with the observations.  

Scientists are particularly excited to finally have images of two black holes of very different sizes, which offers the opportunity to understand how they compare and contrast. They have also begun to use the new data to test theories and models of how gas behaves around supermassive black holes. This process is not yet fully understood but is thought to play a key role in shaping the formation and evolution of galaxies. 

“ Now we can study the differences between these two supermassive black holes to gain valuable new clues about how this important process works ,” said EHT scientist Keiichi Asada from the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, Taipei. “ We have images for two black holes — one at the large end and one at the small end of supermassive black holes in the Universe — so we can go a lot further in testing how gravity behaves in these extreme environments than ever before. ”  

Progress on the EHT continues: a major observation campaign in March 2022 included more telescopes than ever before. The ongoing expansion of the EHT network and significant technological upgrades will allow scientists to share even more impressive images as well as movies of black holes in the near future. 

[1] The individual telescopes involved in the EHT in April 2017, when the observations were conducted, were: the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX), the IRAM 30-meter Telescope, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), the Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano (LMT), the Submillimeter Array (SMA), the UArizona Submillimeter Telescope (SMT), the South Pole Telescope (SPT). Since then, the EHT has added the Greenland Telescope (GLT), the NOrthern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA) and the UArizona 12-meter Telescope on Kitt Peak to its network. 

ALMA is a partnership of the European Southern Observatory (ESO; Europe, representing its member states), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan, together with the National Research Council (Canada), the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST; Taiwan), Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA; Taiwan), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI; Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by ESO, the Associated Universities, Inc./National Radio Astronomy Observatory (AUI/NRAO) and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). APEX , a collaboration between the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (Germany), the Onsala Space Observatory (Sweden) and ESO, is operated by ESO. The 30-meter Telescope is operated by IRAM (the IRAM Partner Organizations are MPG [Germany], CNRS [France] and IGN [Spain]). The JCMT is operated by the East Asian Observatory on behalf of The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan; ASIAA; KASI; the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand; the Center for Astronomical Mega-Science and organisations in the United Kingdom and Canada. The LMT is operated by INAOE and UMass, the SMA is operated by Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian and ASIAA and the UArizona SMT is operated by the University of Arizona. The SPT is operated by the University of Chicago with specialised EHT instrumentation provided by the University of Arizona. 

The Greenland Telescope ( GLT ) is operated by ASIAA and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO). The GLT is part of the ALMA-Taiwan project, and is supported in part by the Academia Sinica (AS) and MOST. NOEMA is operated by IRAM and the UArizona 12-meter telescope at Kitt Peak is operated by the University of Arizona. 

[2] A strong basis for the interpretation of this new image was provided by previous research carried out on Sgr A*. Astronomers have known the bright, dense radio source at the centre of the Milky Way in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius since the 1970s. By measuring the orbits of several stars very close to our galactic centre over a period of 30 years, teams led by Reinhard Genzel (Director at the Max –Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching near Munich, Germany) and Andrea M. Ghez (Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA) were able to conclude that the most likely explanation for an object of this mass and density is a supermassive black hole. ESO's facilities (including the Very Large Telescope and the Very Large Telescope Interferometer ) and the Keck Observatory were used to carry out this research, which shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics . 

[3] Black holes are the only objects we know of where mass scales with size. A black hole a thousand times smaller than another is also a thousand times less massive.  

More information

This research was presented in six papers published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters . 

The EHT collaboration involves more than 300 researchers from Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America. The international collaboration aims to capture the most detailed black hole images ever obtained by creating a virtual Earth-sized telescope. Supported by considerable international efforts, the EHT links existing telescopes using novel techniques — creating a fundamentally new instrument with the highest angular resolving power that has yet been achieved. 

The EHT consortium consists of 13 stakeholder institutes; the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, the University of Arizona, the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, the University of Chicago, the East Asian Observatory, Goethe-Universitaet Frankfurt, Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique, Large Millimeter Telescope, Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, MIT Haystack Observatory, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and Radboud University. 

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of ESO, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded by ESO on behalf of its Member States, by NSF in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and by NINS in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI). ALMA construction and operations are led by ESO on behalf of its Member States; by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), on behalf of North America; and by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) on behalf of East Asia. The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA. 

APEX, Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment, is a 12-metre diameter telescope, operating at millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths — between infrared light and radio waves. ESO operates APEX at one of the highest observatory sites on Earth, at an elevation of 5100 metres, high on the Chajnantor plateau in Chile’s Atacama region. The telescope is a collaboration between the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), the Onsala Space Observatory (OSO), and ESO. 

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) enables scientists worldwide to discover the secrets of the Universe for the benefit of all. We design, build and operate world-class observatories on the ground — which astronomers use to tackle exciting questions and spread the fascination of astronomy — and promote international collaboration in astronomy. Established as an intergovernmental organisation in 1962, today ESO is supported by 16 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), along with the host state of Chile and with Australia as a Strategic Partner. ESO’s headquarters and its visitor centre and planetarium, the ESO Supernova, are located close to Munich in Germany, while the Chilean Atacama Desert, a marvellous place with unique conditions to observe the sky, hosts our telescopes. ESO operates three observing sites: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its Very Large Telescope Interferometer, as well as two survey telescopes, VISTA working in the infrared and the visible-light VLT Survey Telescope. Also at Paranal ESO will host and operate the Cherenkov Telescope Array South, the world’s largest and most sensitive gamma-ray observatory. Together with international partners, ESO operates APEX and ALMA on Chajnantor, two facilities that observe the skies in the millimetre and submillimetre range. At Cerro Armazones, near Paranal, we are building “the world’s biggest eye on the sky” — ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope. From our offices in Santiago, Chile we support our operations in the country and engage with Chilean partners and society.

• Press conference and YouTube Q&A
• Paper I: The Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole in the Center of the Milky Way
• Paper II: EHT and Multi-wavelength Observations, Data Processing, and Calibration
• Paper III: Imaging of the Galactic Center Supermassive Black Hole
• Paper IV: Variability, Morphology, and Black Hole Mass
• Paper V: Testing Astrophysical Models of the Galactic Center Black Hole
• Paper VI: Testing the Black Hole Metric
• Selective Dynamical Imaging of Interferometric Data
• Millimeter Light Curves of Sagittarius A* Observed during the 2017 Event Horizon Telescope Campaign
• A Universal Power Law Prescription for Variability from Synthetic Images of Black Hole Accretion Flows
• Characterizing and Mitigating Intraday Variability: Reconstructing Source Structure in Accreting Black Holes with mm-VLBI
• ESO EHT Milky Way web page  
• EHT Website & Press Release  
• Images of ALMA  
• Images of APEX  

Geoffrey Bower EHT Project Scientist, Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academic Sinica, Taipei and University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, US Tel: +1-808-961-2945 Email: [email protected]

Huib Jan van Langevelde EHT Project Director, JIVE and University of Leiden Leiden, The Netherlands Tel: +31-521-596515 Email: [email protected]

Bárbara Ferreira ESO Media Manager Garching bei München, Germany Tel: +49 89 3200 6670 Cell: +49 151 241 664 00 Email: [email protected]

Connect with ESO on social media

About the Release

• Utility Menu

The Event Horizon Telescope is an international collaboration capturing images of black holes using a virtual Earth-sized telescope.

Astronomers Reveal First Image of the Black Hole at the Heart of Our Galaxy

May 12, 2022: First Image of the Supermassive Black Hole at the Centre of the Milky Way Galaxy

Photos From The April 2017 Observations

First-ever Image of a Black Hole Captured

April 10, 2019: Event Horizon Telescope Publishes the Image of the Black Hole in Galaxy Messier 87

EHT Array Sites

EHT Captures First Polarized Image Around a Black Hole

March 24, 2021: Event Horizon Telescope Captures Polarization in the Ring Around the Messier 87 Black Hole

The Science Behind the EHT

Key Science Objectives, Science Requirements, Observational Technique, and Primary Observing Targets

Enhancing the Sensitivity and Improving the Resolution of the EHT

EHT News Blog

Astronomers unveil strong magnetic fields spiraling at the edge of milky way’s central black hole.

A new image from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration has uncovered strong and organized magnetic fields spiraling from the edge of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). Seen in polarized light for...

M87* One Year Later: Proof of a Persistent Black Hole Shadow

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration has released new images of M87*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy Messier 87, using data from observations taken in April 2018.  With the participation of the newly commissioned Greenland Telescope and a dramatically improved recording rate across the array, the 2018 observations give us a view of the source...

Fifth Year Milestone for the NSBP/SAO EHT Scholars

For the past four years, the National Society of Black Physicists ( NSBP ) and the Smithsonian Astronomical Observatory ( SAO ) have partnered to create cutting-edge research internships within the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project targeting STEM undergrad and graduate students from traditionally underrepresented...

A supermassive black hole’s strong magnetic fields are revealed in a new light

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration has published new results that describe for the first time how light from the edge of the supermassive black hole M87* spirals as it escapes the black hole’s intense gravity, a signature known as circular polarization. The way light’s electric field prefers to rotate clockwise or...

Peering into the heart of a distant quasar with the Event Horizon Telescope

A global collaboration of scientists used the Earth-size virtual radio telescope, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), to see the innermost parts of the quasar NRAO 530. Quasars are extremely powerful sources of radiation located in the centers of distant galaxies. Their central engines are supermassive black holes, funneling accelerated particles and radiation into bright thin jets. Astronomers are trying to understand the complicated...

Resolving the core of the J1924-2914 blazar with the Event Horizon Telescope

Scientists at the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) have imaged the distant blazar J1924-2914 with unprecedented angular resolution, revealing previously unseen details of the source structure. Blazars are powerful active galactic nuclei, in which supermassive black holes eject relativistic jets directed along our line of sight. A blazar can outshine its entire galaxy and may be observed from a distance of billions of light-years with our radio telescopes.

Imaging Reanalyses of EHT Data

The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (EHTC) welcomes critical, independent analysis and interpretation of our published results. We publish detailed descriptions of our methods as well as raw data, data products, and analysis scripts to facilitate transparency, rigor, and reproducibility.  

The EHT images of M87 are among the most vetted interferometric images ever published (1,2). Four independent analyses (3,4,5,6) have reconstructed the ring-like structure of M87, employing a diverse set of techniques.  These efforts complement the three...

Astronomers have unveiled the first image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy. This result provides overwhelming evidence that the object is indeed a black hole and yields valuable clues about the workings of such giants, which are thought to reside at the centre of most galaxies. The image was produced by a global research team called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, using observations from a worldwide network of radio telescopes.

The image is a long-anticipated look at the massive object that sits at the...

Public Data Release of the Event Horizon Telescope 2017 Observations

The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (EHTC) and Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) announce the public data release of the Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) 1-mm observations by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) in April 2017. The overall goal of the observations is to image the supermassive black holes M 87* and Sagittarius A* at event horizon scales and to image the AGNs OJ 287, 3C 279, Centaurus A, and NGC 1052 at high resolution.

Public release data packages are available from...

Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration to Announce Groundbreaking Milky Way Results on May 12th, 2022, at 13:00 UT

Simultaneous press conferences will announce groundbreaking results from the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, those will be synchronised at 13:00 Universal Time on May 12th, 2022.  Those will be held in collaboration with the USA National Science Foundation, the European Southern Observatory, the Joint ALMA Observatory, and other funding agencies and institutions.  These events will also be streamed online.  A selection of the events is listed, by alphabetical order of location (local times are provided).

• Garching bei München, European...

EHT Pinpoints Dark Heart of the Nearest Radio Galaxy

An international team anchored by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, which is known for capturing the first image of a black hole in the galaxy Messier 87, has now imaged the heart of the nearby radio galaxy Centaurus A in unprecedented detail. The astronomers pinpoint the location of the central supermassive black hole and reveal how a gigantic jet is being born. Most remarkably, only the outer edges of the jet seem to emit radiation, which challenges our theoretical models of jets. This work, led by Michael Janssen from the...

NSBP/SAO EHT Scholars Program Reaches Second Year Milestone

Launched in 2020, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory partnership with the National Society of Black Physicists welcomes two Summer 2021 interns to work on Event Horizon Telescope science.

Cambridge, MA (July 14, 2021)— Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian has welcomed two new summer interns thanks to a union between the National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP) and the...

Einstein's Theory Can Explain the Black Hole M87*

Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration scientists use data which produced the first image of a black hole to constrain its fundamental properties.

In 2019, the EHT C ollaboration published the first image of a black hole located ...

Telescopes Unite in Unprecedented Observations of Famous Black Hole

In April 2019, scientists released the first image of a black hole in the galaxy M87 using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). However, that remarkable achievement was just the beginning of the science story to be told.

Astronomers Image Magnetic Fields at the Edge of M87’s Black Hole

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, who produced the first ever image of a black hole, has revealed today a new view of the massive object at the centre of the M87 galaxy: how it looks in polarised light. This is the first time astronomers have been able to measure polarisation, a signature of magnetic fields, this close to the edge of a black hole. The observations are key to explaining how the M87 galaxy, located 55 million light-years away, is able to launch energetic jets from its core.

2021 Henry Draper Medal of the National Academy of Sciences Presented to Shep Doeleman and Heino Falcke

Recognizing their vision and leadership within the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) awards Shep Doeleman and Heino Falcke the Henry Draper Medal.  The 300+ members of the collaboration are honored and proud of this recognition of the revolutionary and fundamental scientific results they achieved together.

The Henry Draper Medal is awarded every four years and honors a recent, original investigation in astronomical physics of sufficient importance and benefit to science.  From the NAS: "the...

2021 Royal Astronomical Society Group Achievement Award Presented to EHT

The  Event Horizon Telescope (EHT)  collaboration is pleased to have been granted by the  Royal Astronomical Society (RAS)  the 2021  Group Achievement Award (A) .  The EHT is a global network of synchronised radio observatories that work in unison to observe radio sources associated with black holes.  In April...

Einstein's Description of Gravity Just Got Much Harder to Beat

Einstein's theory of general relativity – the idea that gravity is matter warping spacetime – has withstood over 100 years of scrutiny and testing, including the newest test from the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, published today in the latest issue of Physical Review Letters .  According to...

Wobbling Shadow of the M87* Black Hole

Analysis of the Event Horizon Telescope observations from 2009-2017 reveals turbulent evolution of the M87* black hole image

In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration delivered ...

NSBP/SAO EHT Scholars Program Opens New Research Pathways for Underrepresented Young Physicists

Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory partners with National Society of Black Physicists to launch annual research internship and recruitment opportunity

Cambridge, MA (September 16, 2020)— The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory ...

Huib van Langevelde named Director of the Event Horizon Telescope Project

Huib van Langevelde, a radio astronomer at the Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC (JIVE), has been named Project Director of the ...

Something is Lurking in the Heart of Quasar 3C 279

First Event Horizon Telescope Images of a Black-Hole Powered Jet

One year ago, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration published the first image of a black hole in the nearby radio galaxy M 87. Now the collaboration has extracted new information from the EHT data on the distant quasar 3C 279: they observed the finest detail ever seen in a jet produced by a supermassive black hole. New analyses, led by Jae-Young Kim from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, enabled the collaboration to trace the jet back to its launch point,...

Award-Winning First Image of the Supermassive Black Hole in M87

The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration had been awarded a number of prestigious awards and titles for its ground-breaking results in making the first-ever image of a black hole in the galaxy M87. The discovery was announced one year ago , and has been considered as one of the most interesting science stories of 2019. We are deeply...

EHT Observing Campaign 2020 Canceled Due to the COVID-19 Outbreak

The global array of telescopes connected into the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) was due to start observations at the end of March 2020 in order to expand and enhance the first set of results published approximately one year ago, including the first-ever image of a black hole in the galaxy M87 . Regrettably, several participating...

Announcement of the Next Generation Event Horizon Telescope Design Program

The United States National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced the award of a $12.7M grant to architect and design a next-generation Event Horizon Telescope (ngEHT). The principal investigator of this program is the EHT Founding Director, Sheperd Doeleman at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. The ngEHT will sharpen our focus on black holes, and let researchers move from still-imagery to real-time videos of space-time at the event horizon.

The new award is aimed at solving the formidable technical and algorithmic challenges required to...

First-ever Image of a Black Hole Published by the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration

Global Web Tour of EHT Observatories

The Event Horizon Telescope is a global network of synchronized radio observatories that work in unison to observe radio sources associated with black holes with angular resolution comparable to their event horizons. The required extreme resolving power makes scientists and engineers go to some of the most extreme environments on the Earth to collect data. On EHT social media pages,  Twitter ...

EHT on Twitter (@ehtelescope)

Eht in the media.

Images of a black hole reveal how cosmic beasts change over time

Scientists Predict Countless Rings of Light Encircle Black Holes, Reports Sky & Telescope

The 2020 Rossi Prize: Top High-energy Prize Awarded to the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration by the AAS

Science News: 2019 brought us the first image of a black hole; a movie may be next

"Darkness made visible": Breakthrough of the year 2019 is the EHT image of M87, according to Science Magazine

Raquel Fraga, a galega que axudou a capturar o buraco negro -- entrevista en Galego

The Event Horizon Telescope and Member Sara Issaoun Feature in "Starts with a Bang" Podcast

Nuts and Bolts of the EHT: Black Hole Data Processing Storage Explained in Forbes

National Science Foundation (NSF) announces new Diamond Achievement Award, to be presented to the EHT Collaboration

Telescopes in space for even sharper images of black holes: a new study led by Radboud University researchers

Shep Doeleman Talks at the TED2019 Conference: Inside the Black Hole Image That Made History

10 Deep Lessons From Our First Image Of A Black Hole's Event Horizon, by Ethan Siegel for Forbes

Network of eight radio telescopes around the world records revolutionary image, reports Guardian

Scientific American: The Event Horizon Telescope captures one of the universe’s most mysterious objects

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General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Title: atom falling into a quantum corrected charged black hole and hbar entropy.

Abstract: In an earlier analysis \href{ this https URL }{Phys. Rev. D 105 (2022) 085007}, we have explored the event of acceleration radiation for an atom freely falling into the event horizon of a quantum corrected Schwarzschild black hole. We want to explore the acceleration-radiation when the atom is freely falling into the event horizon of a charged quantum corrected black hole. We consider quantum effects of the electromagnetic field along with the gravitational field in asymptotic safety regime. Introducing the quantum improved Reisner-Nordström metric, we have calculated the excitation probability of a two-level atom freely falling into the event horizon of quantum improved charged black hole. Recently, in case of the braneworld black hole (where the tidal charge has the same dimension as the square of the charge of a Reissner-Nordström black hole in natural units), we have observed from the form of the transition probability that the temperature will have no contribution in the first order of the tidal charge. We observe that for a quantum corrected Reissner-Nordström black hole, there is a second order contribution in the charge parameter in the temperature that can be read off from the transition probability. Next, we calculate the HBAR entropy in this thought experiment and show that this entropy has a leading order Bekenstein-Hawking entropy term along with some higher order correction terms involving logarithmic as well as fractional terms of the black hole area due to infalling photons. We have finally investigated the validity of the Wien's displacement law and compared the critical value of the field wavelength with the general Schwarzschild black hole and its corresponding quantum corrected case.

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