First image of a black hole

[twentyleagues]

your looking 55 million years in the past,

I'm not arguing the point, but I do believe that our out look on light years will eventually change also. So at this time in our understanding of things yes we are looking at light that left that blackhole 55 million years ago. And that could all be gone now. But I believe that we will eventually change the light years concept to more of a mileage then time based idea. Our understanding and current technology only allows for the years concept. That's of coarse if we dont become extinct first.

 

[Ulu]

Anything else would be asking to violate the lightspeed maximum.
You can't see photons that aren't here yet.

 

[Warborg]

Don't get me wrong...I'm into space. I have an 8 inch scope. Seen all the planets(except Pluto;it was a planet back then). Seen black space inbetween the rings of Saturn, 6 moons around Jupiter, Polar caps on Mars, A blurry glob called Andromeda Galaxy, The Mir space station.

I even have a iSS app on my phone and watched the Space X launch today ,which all three rockets landed on their return.

 

[Ulu]

I was very interested in stargazing when I lived in remote places where light pollution was nil, but I haven't really used my scope in years. There's no good viewing until you go up the mountain.

I never had any over 4", but I helped the local HS kids build a 12 incher. Mostly I supplied some materials, paint, the tube and a truck. They ground the 12" mirror!
With my little 60x you could see about half the moons of Jupiter, which was amazing. Nebulas, comets and novas . . .Oh my!

Still, we never could have imagined the pics from the Hubble etc, when I got my first telescope in 1963.

 

[Ulu]

BTW I should have explained a little better.

The black hole is supermassive, but it's not a fraction as big as the vast cloud of glowing matter falling in.

That's the big part we can see. Also, I should have said "cooler gas" instead of "cooling gas".

That gas is heating up, as it gets ever closer.

 

[Warborg]

Let's say for the rest of this post, I believe it.

Yahoo news is giving full credit to a 29 year old woman. Not a team or a group of people... just 1 29 year old woman. So, she built these 5 locations, personally flew to all 5 locations, collected information at all 5, put them together and drew the picture....ok.

Btw, every single comment I saw said the same thing.

 

[twentyleagues]

Let's say for the rest of this post, I believe it.

Yahoo news is giving full credit to a 29 year old woman. Not a team or a group of people... just 1 29 year old woman. So, she built these 5 locations, personally flew to all 5 locations, collected information at all 5, put them together and drew the picture....ok.

Btw, every single comment I saw said the same thing.

I don't know about that or really care to be honest. She could have had the brain storm of a life time and said we need to do "x"! I'll monitor it from this terminal after all are synced, or she could have flown to all the locations and personally over seen the operation to get them synced. I didnt read any of that, the people part doesnt interest me. Neither does the schamantics of the day to day how. I get the mean idea fine and I'm good.

 

[ehh]

the image is blurry because it is very small. the distance that galaxy is from us is incomprehensible. 53 million lightyears. it has taken 53 million years for the light of that image to make its way to Earth. the image is 4 microarcseconds wide. not only is the distance crazy but so is the "true size" of the picture. the picture is .0001 of a degree of arc. think of a protractor, think of 1 degree on that protractor, now think of .0001th of that one degree.

how do we know? the same way we know that your cell phone is emitting invisible electromagnetic waves to send a text message, to make a phone call... to view this site. the image produced wasn't taken in the visible spectrum. it was taken in radio near infrared. our eyes don't detect anything other than visible light, so the image has to be generated in the way that it is. the same way that an infrared (IR) camera works. an IR camera shows all kinds of crazy colors or different shades of grey. now, we don't actually see those colors coming off whatever object we're looking at, but the IR camera allows to "see" different concentrations of IR radiation coming off of an object. x-rays works the way. the radio waves that make this picture are made of the same stuff that the x rays your dentist uses when imaging your teeth. you don't see those X-rays but we're more than capable of detecting them.

what i find most amazing about the results of the image is that it helps confirms Einstein's theory of general relativity which was published in 1915. 100 years ago someone theorized what we are confirming now. Think of the advancements that have been in the 100 years since. it crazy to think that the math behind what we are seeing was written when the Model T was a thing.

astronomy is a hard field to wrap your head around. you kind of have to let go off the scale that you live your day-to-day life in and rely on our in-depth understanding of physics, math, and light. all forms of light, not just visible light. don't be so quick to doubt the research until you really understand the math and methods that have gone into producing these results. i worked for the university here for about three years studying quasars. the same math that makes your cell phone tick, is the same math being used to generate and explain this image.

the 7 or 8 papers published fortunately have been released to the public for free. feel free to read them then offer a more informed criticism about the methods used to produce the image. you can find the papers here: https://iopscience.iop.org/nsearch?...tePeriod=anytime&orderBy=newest&pageLength=10

 

[Ulu]

It's invisible!

If you were very close, the image would still appear fuzzy, like a shadow under neon light.

All you can see is a shadow projection on a gas cloud. Shine a flashlight into a dark cloudy aquarium and make a shadow bunny on the cloud and it will become immediately evident to you. It's not possible for a coherent focused image to form on a cloud of dispersed particles.

 

[ehh]

It's invisible!

If you were very close, the image would still appear fuzzy, like a shadow under neon light.

All you can see is a shadow projection on a gas cloud. Shine a flashlight into a dark cloudy aquarium and make a shadow bunny on the cloud and it will become immediately evident to you. It's not possible for a coherent focused image to form on a cloud of dispersed particles.

that too. all that hot gas and dust around the black hole definitely makes it harder to see. not only that stuff, but also all the gas and dust that exists between us and M87.