Including the powerful ALMA into an array of telescopes for the first time, astronomers have found that the emission from the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) at the center of our Galaxy comes from a smaller region than previously thought. This may indicate that a radio jet from Sgr A* is pointed almost toward us. The paper, led by the Nijmegen PhD student Sara Issaoun, is published in The...
In case you were wondering where the Event Horizon Telescope is at with the world's first photo of a black hole around this time, maybe this video made by Seeker at the MIT Haystack Observatory -- one of the EHT stakeholder institutions -- will help you out:
At the centre of our own galaxy there is a black hole, called Sagittarius A*. In anticipation of the first actual photograph of a black hole, an international project that also involves astronomers of Radboud University, Jordy Davelaar and colleagues have built a virtual reality (VR) simulation of the phenomenon. The VR simulation was published in the journal Computation Astrophysics and Cosmology on November 19th.
The EHT is closer than ever to its goal, as the project continues to increase its resolving power and sensitivity as more telescopes join the system. Another important aspect of this project exists, however: the ability to analyze and characterize the images it produces in a meaningful way. Recently, a team of scientists led by Lia Medeiros (University of Arizona, University of California Santa Barbara) has demonstrated that a novel approach — principal component analysis — may be a useful tool in this process. Learn more about it in... Read more about Planning for images of a black hole: New image analysis tools presented in an article in AAS Nova
