On March 14th, the world lost Stephen Hawking, a luminary who inspired many of the scientists working on the Event Horizon Telescope project. Stephen’s work on black holes helped bring them center stage in our efforts to understand the universe. He was aware of the EHT’s goal of imaging a black hole event horizon, having visited the Black Hole Initiative (BHI) at Harvard in April 2016.
The EHT team has been analyzing data collected during our most recent observing campaign, and had hoped to be able to share the results with Stephen. Some EHT members connected our efforts to the Stephen's seminal work on black holes in the article entitled "Seeing a Black Hole Through Stephen Hawking's Eyes", published in The Atlanic.
We send our sincere condolences to his family, and as we move forward with our work, we are mindful of, and deeply thankful for, his legacy of scholarship and spirit of adventure.