Black Hole Image

[Togo]

Sometime today NASA will be releasing images of Sagittarius A, the black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. (No Mars bar jokes please). Brilliant science to gather and correlate the info using radio telescopes across the World that were synced with an atomic clock. It has taken 2 years to put the image together and I for one can't wait to see it. The link below contains some useful explanations of why and how it was done, and rather good explanatory videos.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/first-black-hole-image-could-change-everything-we-know-about-the-universe/ar-BBVMH7r?li=BBoPWjQ

[Old_Geezer]

Tried the video, all I could see was a black screen !

[Togo]

Lol Geezer.....I though they would show a picture of the "Brexit" negotiations. Which video wouldn't play?

[Ken4155]

Wonder if, when the images are made public, we'll see Dr Who sitting there doing her nails :-/

[mushroom25]

//we'll see Dr Who sitting there doing her nails//

depends how old the event horizon is - it could be Patrick Troughton....

[Zacs-Master]

The picture is thru!

[Zacs-Master]

http://i67.tinypic.com/2jbnrco.jpg

[Togo]

Here is the image. Stunning really.

//The image shows an intensely bright "ring of fire", as Prof Falcke describes it, surrounding a perfectly circular dark hole. The bright halo is caused by superheated gas falling into the hole. The light is brighter than all the billions of other stars in the galaxy combined - which is why it can be seen at such distance from Earth.//

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47873592

[spathiphyllum]

Live video on facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/LADbible/videos/540822273115340/?notif_id=1554901329128449&notif_t=live_video

[Arksided]

Fascinating stuff... I would like to point out though that M87 is a galaxy far, far away please forgive me and not the centre of our galaxy named the milky way as posted by Togo in his OP.

'Sagittarius A, the black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy.'

[Togo]

Yes Arks it is indeed. All the info was indicating a picture of Sagittarius A but the accompanying script with the released picture says that it is harder to image that black hole than the bigger distant one with its accompanying "halo".

[Lie-in King]

Fantastic, ta Togo :-)

[EDDIE51]

As a Black Hole has gravity so strong that not even light can escape , I fail to see how we can have a photo of one !

[Mamyalynne]

Marvellous image, what a fabulous collaboration.

[naomi24]

Eddie, without the ‘ring of fire’ surrounding it I’d hazard an educated guess that we wouldn’t have a picture of it!

It measures 40 billion km across and is 500 million trillion km away.

Gobsmacking distances. Unimaginable! Exciting stuff!

[Ellipsis]

> The bright halo is caused by superheated gas falling into the hole. The light is brighter than all the billions of other stars in the galaxy combined

My first thoughts are that this gas should surround the black hole, which means that we should not be able to see the black hole, only a giant ball of gas. I'll investigate more later ...

[naomi24]

Ellipsis, listening to a Radio 4 report a little while ago I think they said the light is actually light in the process of being sucked into the black hole.

[ladybirder]

Yes, it says in Togo's link //The bright halo is caused by superheated gas falling into the hole.\\
Blows my mind.

[Ellipsis]

But if we can see light around the black hole, why can't we see light in front of, and therefore obscuring, the black hole? I'm sure there's a good explanation, I just can't think of it right now.

[Togo]

Ellipses, I am sure that I once read that a black hole is a tunnel at the end of the light. :))

[naomi24]

Hmmmm .....

Wouldn't it be something if we were actually looking at the BACK of the black hole and seeing a halo of the light being sucked into the open end? Like looking at a tube blocked at one end and open at the other. Just musing.