The most anticipated Astronomy Event of my life from mm waves:

[Beamin]

They (scientists) are using Millimeter waves to resolve what a black hole in Sagittarius A 25,000ly away *actually looks like using telescopes from all over the planet. They said something about the size of the planet and mm waves are the perfect resolution by some random fluke of nature to do this much like how the moon and sun are perfect sizes to give us eclipses but they didn't elaborate on why. They have the data in after waiting six months for data from the south pole to be flown in.


For me this is the most exciting event because ever since I was a kid I was obsessed with black holes and what they actually looked like. From the simulation, the black disc with gravitational lensed galaxies around it isn't what they look like, as they are feeding off something most of the time. It looks more like a candle with a marble in it that is spinning. I'm still trying to imagine a 3D hole and if you could walk into and out of it. How you could walk in would be easy, but to get out you would have to walk around a corner like a 2D hole but to do that in 3D you have to make a 90' turn somehow so it would be a 360' turn. Still boggles the mind to have a hole in space in 3D.

https://eventhorizontelescope.org/

Trying to find more info on the radio/mm wave array and the strange place between RF and light.

[eecook]

I am actually following the events myself. Can't wait to see the final render!

[Beamin]

I am actually following the events myself. Can't wait to see the final render!

It still boggles my mind how people can say the earth is flat or 5000 years old when we can actually see this stuff or how they will use the internet to tell people this, when that relies on the speed of light being finite to work or bounce of satellites or microwave links that are aimed with the curvature of the earth in mind. 

[T3sl4co1l]

Between that, and the gravitational wave observatories now finally online ("now" being relative to the long history between knowing of them, and finally detecting them), and the various planned space telescopes and interplanetary missions, and operational or already-completed missions like Cassini and New Horizons and Curiosity and more... it's a pretty cool time to be alive.

Tim

[Beamin]

7 minutes until they post the pictures!!!!

[Beamin]

https://youtu.be/lnJi0Jy692w

Forgot link too excited!!

[Beamin]

here it is a yellow orange smudge. Meh.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/04/harvard-scientists-lead-team-revealing-black-hole/

[Beamin]

This is the best video to explain what you are seeing:
https://youtu.be/zUyH3XhpLTo

Also this is the M87 black hole not sag a star like they said or I thought they said they were imaging.

Its event horizon is the size of Neptune's orbit. Crazy.

[orion242]

All the hype this morning and then I saw the results....blurry nothing burger imo.

[Halcyon]

It still boggles my mind how people can say the earth is flat or 5000 years old when we can actually see this stuff or how they will use the internet to tell people this, when that relies on the speed of light being finite to work or bounce of satellites or microwave links that are aimed with the curvature of the earth in mind.

I know there are literally thousands of videos out there debunking flat-earthers, but this one is particularly worth a watch (if for nothing else but a laugh). This guy responds to a bunch of flat-earthers (and you hear their responses). It just goes to show how insane these people are:

[hamster_nz]

I assume the mm wavelength is important, as the angular resolution is a function.of the wavelength over the up to ~13,000 km baseline between observatories.

When you think about all the magic needed, such as to take the ionospheric conditions into account, it is mind-boggling.

[RobBarter]

mm wavelength definitely improves resolution but it brings heaps of problems with the VLBI aspects.  Been looking at what it would take for an amateur to do VLBI at 22cm and the sampling frequency has to be spot on. Maybe 10% of the wavelength for the whole of the viewing period with no jitter.

[Mechatrommer]

what are we seeing here? right a black hole. it was black before, and it is still black today, or the lensed light around it no?. fascinating the most a wonderful time to live, i've heard that since the day of aristotle. next step is using um, nm, pm wavelength to get closer and closer to see that it is still black, what a wonderfull age that will be when it comes.

[apis]

Now they just need to put these things in space. Imagine hundreds of gravitational wave observatories in orbit around the sun with detector arms that are not 4 km long but 4 million km. Or hundreds of very very large radio telescopes that are not 13000 km apart, but 300 million km apart (or more). We would be able to see planets in other solar systems.

[chris_leyson]

It's an amazing achievement getting an image of what a black hole might look like. It's taken a lot of hard work from many scientists to get this far but without the work of Dr Katie Bouman at MIT it would never have happened. Here's a recent TED talk from Katie Bourman.
https://youtu.be/BIvezCVcsYs

[BillB]

It's a shame the perceived "low-quality" of the image diminishes the profound importance of this event in the eyes of the general public (I blame Interstellar  ).  To essentially have evidence that validates our model of black holes and further demonstrates the predictions of General Relativity is amazing, indeed. 

I can't wait to see Sagittarius A*!

[chris_leyson]

It's a shame the perceived "low-quality" of the image diminishes the profound importance of this event in the eyes of the general public

To be honest I would say it was a damn good high quality image for eight radio telescopes located on a small blue blob Shame that pioneers like Karl Jansky and Bernard Lovell couldn't see this. Interesting times indeed. Edit: I think the general public are too busy looking at their smart phones rather than the world around them let alone the sky above them.

[orion242]

Nothing burger...

[electromotive]

The young woman that worked to create the algorithm to make this all come together most certainly deserves high accolades, and at minimum, the attention of the Nobel. Having looked at the mathematics involved (and having a background in higher level mathematics), it's no simple task to process 4D-in-3D information into 3D, without it coming out a mess. It's a weird sort of recursion going on to make it all work properly, or at least well enough to image it *reasonably* accurately.

To be honest, I'm astounded it happened in our lifetimes, and I'm glad I got to see it.

[orion242]

Its impressive it can be done.  Just because it can be done, doesn't mean there is a solid reason to do it.

[Mechatrommer]

that Katie Bouman video is reasonable since she used most words like assume, infinite number of possibilities, the "algorithm", hope and "we cant see it yet". at least she knows better what a reality looks like.. If you are able to pass through the regions of the heavens (sorry its a tabbo word, change with "sky") and the earth, then pass through; you cannot pass through but with authority ("Quotation" 55:33) they asked for it and they got (are given to) it, a little at a time

[hamster_nz]

Ask people..."How far away do you think that Black Hole is, you know, the one we got that glimpse of this week?"

The answer is just so mindbogglingly huge that no matter what people say you just say "nah, much further".

(500 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 km)

[hamster_nz]

Well worth the watch - from about 2 years ago

[soldar]

Big publicity stunt for a whole lot of nothing.

False color, computer generated "artist's impression" of what it might look like if it looked like that. Meh.

Don't get me wrong. This might well be an important milestone for the scientific community and the advancement of science but the way the release of the "photo" was done is just a publicity stunt with the object of gaining exposure. Just like the presentation of a new commercial product. They make it into a big deal just to attract attention.

[magic]

All radio imaging is false color, and for good reason
It's not "artist's impression" either, radio images are produced by scanning over the target with a directional antenna. It's a legitimate image.

They used VLBI to improve resolution, fair enough, the basic technique has been in use for decades.
Now, they claim some novel DSP techniques to get the resolution down so that could be fishy. But per the Harvard article linked earlier, the processing has been independently performed by four teams using four different techniques and there are big name universities standing behind the effort so I would presume it's legit.

The TED talk supposedly does not describe any of the techniques used this time.