Photograph: Ricardo DeAratanha/LA Times via Getty ImagesĪstronomers study black holes for several reasons. US astrophysicist Kip Thorne helped design the black hole for the film Interstellar. “That radiation will provide the background against which we hope to see the shadow of the black hole at our galaxy’s heart,” adds Muxlow. As discs of material swirl around black holes they become extremely hot and give off electromagnetic radiaiton that can be detected in telescopes. However, we know they exist because they affect nearby dust clouds, stars and galaxies. The fact that light cannot escape black holes makes them tricky to observe, to say the least. “The event horizon is a surface in space-time, and if you go beyond that then you cannot get out again,” says Robert Laing, of the European Southern Observatory, a partner in the project. The point of no return, the boundary at which a black hole’s gravitational pull becomes so great nothing can emerge, is known as an event horizon. Its gravitational pull is so great nothing can escape from it – not even light. Nevertheless, most astronomers believe the film’s black hole is a good representation of what might be seen when the Event Horizon Telescope does its work.Ī black hole is a region of space where matter has collapsed in on itself and become compressed into an incredibly small region. ![]() ![]() “In fact, the accretion disc around the black hole in our galaxy’s core is likely to be much thicker, geometrically, than the one in Interstellar, and so look somewhat different,” says Thorne. These strands of matter are known as an accretion disc. Gargantua, as it is named in the film, is depicted as a round black patch that hangs menacingly in the sky with swirling, luminous strands of matter pouring into it. Working with US astrophysicist Kip Thorne, Nolan went to considerable pains to develop something that looked like a “realistic” black hole. The resulting image, say scientists, could look very much like the one created by director Christopher Nolan for the film Interstellar. However, it will probably require a further six months of work to put together the observations made by all of the Event Horizon Telescope project’s component telescopes, which include instruments at the south pole and in the Andes, Hawaii and Europe. Our galaxy’s great black hole is also known as Sagittarius A*, because it lies in the constellation Sagittarius and the data collection that will be used to create its image is set to take place in April. That photograph will reveal the contours of a black hole for the first time.” It’s like a telescope that allows you to read a newspaper headline on the moon while standing on Earth Tom Muxlow, astronomer It will be an image of its silhouette sliding against the background glow of radiation of the heart of the Milky Way. We are actually going to take a picture of its shadow. “To be precise, we are not going to take a direct photograph of the black hole at our galaxy’s heart. “It is going to be very, very hard to take this photograph but we think we now have the technological capability to do it,” says Manchester University astronomer Tom Muxlow, based at the Jodrell Bank observatory in Cheshire. Yet scientists believe they will soon be able to take a photograph of this interstellar behemoth – an extraordinarily ambitious feat that will involve the creation of a radio telescope that has the effective size of our entire planet and whose operation will involve scientists from four continents.
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