Post by headdunce on Jan 19, 2012 7:16:50 GMT -6
www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/18/picture_black_hole_galaxy/
A conference being held this week in Arizona will lay the groundwork for an attempt to visualize the supermassive black hole that resides at the heart of our galaxy.
....
The EHT program will plan how to coordinate 50 radio telescopes across our planet to focus on the black hole center of our galaxy. This galactic maw has around four million times the mass of our sun and is 26,000 light years away – about 245,979,000,000,000,000 kilometers, give or take a few trillion. Trying to image this from earth is the equivalent looking for a grapefruit on the surface of the moon – catching an image of the black hole's surroundings will take a telescope over 2,000 times as powerful as Hubble, according to Doeleman.
A conference being held this week in Arizona will lay the groundwork for an attempt to visualize the supermassive black hole that resides at the heart of our galaxy.
....
The EHT program will plan how to coordinate 50 radio telescopes across our planet to focus on the black hole center of our galaxy. This galactic maw has around four million times the mass of our sun and is 26,000 light years away – about 245,979,000,000,000,000 kilometers, give or take a few trillion. Trying to image this from earth is the equivalent looking for a grapefruit on the surface of the moon – catching an image of the black hole's surroundings will take a telescope over 2,000 times as powerful as Hubble, according to Doeleman.