The Event Horizon Telescope: New Developments and Results
Abstract
A convergence of high-bandwidth radio instrumentation and global submillimeter facilities is enabling assembly of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT): a short-wavelength Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry array capable of observing the nearest supermassive black holes with Schwarzschild-radius resolution. Initial observations with the EHT have revealed event-horizon-scale structure in Sgr A*, the 4 million solar mass black hole at the Galactic center, and in the much more luminous and massive black hole at the center of the giant elliptical galaxy M87. The past year has witnessed rapid expansion of the array, including first light and successful interferometric fringes for new receivers at the Large Millimeter Telescope in Mexico and the South Pole Telescope, as well as fringes to the ALMA phased array. Concurrent instrumental developments also allow 2 GHz observing bandwidth with dual polarization in the 2015 observing campaign. Together, these advances will yield an unprecedented combination of sensitivity and resolution, with excellent prospects for imaging strong general relativistic signatures, detecting horizon-scale magnetic field structures through full polarization observations, and time-resolving dynamical activity near a black hole. I will briefly review the recent developments and technical timeline for completing the EHT and will present new results from our 2013 observing campaign.
- Publication:
-
IAU General Assembly
- Pub Date:
- August 2015
- Bibcode:
- 2015IAUGA..2257792J