Astronomers are planning to meet this week for an ambitious and unprecedented project of capturing the first ever image of a black hole. Researchers are thinking to construct an Earth-size virtual instrument called the "Event Horizon Telescope". A new in its kind radio telescope is planned to be constructed, which will be powerful enough to capture the super-massive "black hole" at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy.
According to Space, Dimitrios Psaltis of the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory said in a statement that nobody has ever taken a picture of a super-massive black hole. Astronomers want to record an image of the heart of the galaxy for the first time in history. The "Event Horizon Telescope" links observatories from all over the world so that a huge telescope can be formed, starting from Europe via Chile and Hawaii right down to the South Pole.
The Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy is also involved with the measurements that will run from 4 to 14 April initially. Many researchers including Albert Einstein described the concept of black holes. It was found from research that this "black hole" have a large and extremely compact mass that even light can't escape from it. This is the reason it remains black and it is nearly impossible to observe it directly.
According to Phys.org, astronomers and researchers have found strong gravitational force waves coming from the center of the black hole. It is possible to observe the black hole directly but scientist calls the boundary around this exotic object beyond which matter and light are inescapable. It is also said that if a matter passed this boundary, it emits intense radiation similar to "death cry" and thus the last record of its existence.
Thus "Event Horizon Telescope" is aiming to accomplish this precisely. The black hole is 26,000 light years away from Earth and can be seen at an extremely small angle only. Thus the idea behind is rather creating a huge telescope, several images can be captured by different observatories from different angles and then combine them together. The larger the telescope the finer the details can be observed and the so-called angular resolution increases.
