Physics Program Presents

Imaging Black Holes with the Event Horizon Telescope

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a network of eleven millimeter-wavelength radio telescopes that spans the globe from Greenland to the South Pole. Using the technique of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), the EHT combines data from these telescopes to produce images with resolution comparable to that of a single telescope with the Earth’s diameter. The EHT has imaged both the supermassive black hole in the giant elliptical galaxy M87 and Sagittarius A*, the black hole in our Galactic Center. These images show rings of light produced by extremely hot, magnetized plasma with sizes very similar to that of the black hole's theoretical ‘shadow.’ Producing these images required years of painstaking calibration, validation, and imaging of EHT data, as well as new advances in numerical simulations required to model the turbulent plasma inflows and outflows around black holes. In this talk, I will discuss how the EHT obtained its images and how we use them to understand the extreme environments around supermassive black holes. I will also discuss how future advances in both EHT observations and theoretical simulations will both reveal the connection between supermassive black holes and extragalactic jets and enable more precise tests of General Relativity near the black hole boundary.

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For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4

Location: Hegeman 107

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