I’m seeing two versions – this seems to be the official one.
Scientists have obtained the first image of a black hole, using Event Horizon Telescope observations of the center of the galaxy M87. The image shows a bright ring formed as light bends in the intense gravity around a black hole that is 6.5 billion times more massive than the Sun pic.twitter.com/AymXilKhKe
— Event Horizon 'Scope (@ehtelescope) April 10, 2019
Here's the first ever image of an actual black hole, press conference here:https://t.co/viQrOyseoQ pic.twitter.com/CFz45KtRya
— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) April 10, 2019
Open thread.
Betty Cracker
Looks like what a Krispy Kreme burglar wearing infrared glasses might see if someone left a stray glazed doughnut on the rack.
Anonymous At Work
Two uneven lumps like that make it seem like God is a drunk fat dude that’s mooning us…
Which would explain more than the Pope would like to admit…
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: Betty, I love that, you are a treasure.
jeffreyw
it looks like someone threw a glazed donut up into the sky and took a picture of it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Betty Cracker: No such thing as infrared glasses…infrared is outside of the visible spectrum, we can’t see it. However, digital cameras can record light outside of the visible spectrum, so we have infrared pictures.
ETA: It’s why near infrared is used for security cameras, the bad guys can’t see the light for the camera.
japa21
Fascinating.
japa21
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Which is why you can buy infrared glasses from Amazon.
rikyrah
Scary ??
Cheryl Rofer
schrodingers_cat
@?BillinGlendaleCA: We call infra red frequencies, heat
Cheryl Rofer
rikyrah
Rebecca Ballhaus (@rebeccaballhaus) Tweeted:
NEW: Prosecutors gathered more evidence than previously known in their probe of hush payments to women alleging affairs w/Trump—including interviewing Hope Hicks & Keith Schiller last spring. w/@nicole_hong @rebeccadobrien @joe_palazzolo @mrothfeld
https://t.co/q7Bb7SNcpl https://twitter.com/rebeccaballhaus/status/1115949343729758208?s=17
OzarkHillbilly
I’m disappointed. All I see is a black hole.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@japa21: Any “infrared glasses” would have a camera that can capture light in the infrared portion of the spectrum, optics by themselves can’t change non-visible light to visible light.
Cheryl Rofer
germy
The universe of the Very Large and the Very Tiny is incomprehensible to me. I have enough trouble understanding the Middle Observable where I live.
Gin & Tonic
@Cheryl Rofer: Is it just me, or does that second image look like something else?
MattF
Before the reveal, reports said that data was also processed from the Milky Way black hole, so maybe that’s still TBD.
rikyrah
Jesse Lehrich (@JesseLehrich) Tweeted:
CNN just asked Gillibrand 6 (SIX!) questions at this town hall about her friendship with Hillary Clinton. https://twitter.com/JesseLehrich/status/1115803053180051456?s=17
?BillinGlendaleCA
@schrodingers_cat: It depends on the portion of the infrared spectrum, near infrared isn’t all that hot. Most altered digital cameras won’t capture a heat source, but will collect near infrared from the sun reflected of live plant material.
Betty Cracker
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Next you’re gonna tell me that’s not really a doughnut! ?
Cheryl Rofer
@Gin & Tonic: The second image looks like it has been processed slightly differently. Or perhaps is a photo of a projected slide.
What does it look like to you?
germy
@Cheryl Rofer:
What I don’t understand is: When a picture is on such a massive scale, is it still visually accurate? What we see around us is based on the “instant” light of our surroundings. If I took a photo of two people standing next to each other, but it took light 1500 years to get from one person to the other, is their pose still representative?
I don’t even know if my questions make sense.
OzarkHillbilly
@MattF: All the reporting till now that I had seen was directed towards Sagittarius A*, had read nothing about imaging M-87.
Cheryl Rofer
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I think we’re talking about night vision goggles, which are obviously a thing. I assume they work by receiving infrared and generating a digital display in the visible.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Betty Cracker: They claim it’s a black hole, they’re scientists with lots of letters after their names.
germy
@OzarkHillbilly:
Robert Benchley worked briefly as a newspaper reporter and admitted he was bad at his job. During a trip to Venice, Italy he sent a telegram to his editor: “Streets flooded. Please advise.”
OzarkHillbilly
@germy: It would depend on the relative speeds at which they were receding from you. ;-)
Doug R
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yeah, I noticed putting pretty much any digital camera in black and white mode lets you see the infra-red flashes from remote controls.
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: My memory is failing me, but didn’t we have a commenter who would go on and on about the artificial nature of these astrophotography images. Somehow because they were digitally processed they weren’t actual images of real objects. Clearly the “arguments” weren’t persuasive to me, or I’d have remembered them better.
germy
@Gin & Tonic: “Hey Oh” [Ed McMahon voice]
Cheryl Rofer
@germy: Think about a triangle, with a base between the two people, and then two sides to you. If the two sides are equal, then you’re seeing the whole thing at the same “time”. Meaning that astronomical objects are far enough away that we are seeing them at some time in the past anyway.
If the two sides are different lengths, then we’re seeing a time series across the object. I would imagine that this is taken into account, but I haven’t read the full papers.
Gin & Tonic
@Cheryl Rofer: Nothing, it was an attempt at a crude joke based on the fact that the right-hand photo in that MJ Franklin tweet looks more anatomical than astronomical. I’ll see myself out.
Cheryl Rofer
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Different types of night vision goggles work different ways, some do work as you indicated, others work by amplifying visible light.
Nelle
@germy: Well-stated. I think you’ve captured my situation as well as any photograph.
I’m trying to get oriented to life in Des Moines. The Register has a list of candidate appearance…looks like an overstuffed menu. Hickenlooper? Swalwell? Harris? Bennett? Mayor P? Castro? Indigestion already….
OzarkHillbilly
@MattF: Just read this at the Guardian:
So as one should expect, the media only told half the story (Sag A*- yes, M87- nothing) and continues to tell only half the story (here’s a pic of M87’s black hole, Sag A* ???????????????????????????????????????)
Cheryl Rofer
germy
@Cheryl Rofer: Oh. I was thinking of light passing between the two objects (or “people” or event) rather than the light approaching me.
Cheryl Rofer
I’m gonna make myself some breakfast now, y’all.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Doug R: You don’t even need to put them in B/W mode, you can see it in color; but digital cameras have what’s called a “hot mirror” to prevent most IR and UV from getting to the sensor. Otherwise your pics would have really odd color.
ETA: While some IR does get through, you can see the IR transmitter on a remote, most doesn’t. That’s why if you want to take pics that capture light in the IR portion that the sensor can capture, you have to modify the camera.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: sgrAstar comments on this very blog.
ETA: As does M31.
Cheryl Rofer
@germy: I’ve had a similar thought about the Song Festival stadium in Tallinn. The stage holds 30,000 people, and it’s big enough from one side to the other that sound is going to be delayed. Yet everyone sings together, and the sound is amazing. All I can figure is that people totally watch the conductor and don’t depend on what they hear.
But if you were on one side of the black hole event horizon (not a good idea) you would see what was happening 1500 years ago on the other side as you were sucked in.
Betty Cracker
@Gin & Tonic: Yes! I don’t remember the name either, but I do remember comments that were incredibly indignant about the LIES!!! streaming in from the Hubble Space Telescope or something like that.
MattF
@Gin & Tonic: in the presentations, it was mentioned that extracting an image from the data was done by four independent teams. And, when they got together to compare results, they were all basically identical.
I’m sympathentic to the notion that derived images are basically smoke and mirrors, but it seems to me that the researchers have done what they could to get meaningful results.
OzarkHillbilly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Come for the pet pictures, stay for the astronomy.
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
???
But, really…some very bright people here at BJ.
schrodingers_cat
@Gin & Tonic: IIRC, JGC commissioned some art work from this dude. Ted and Helen or something to that effect, he had several nyms.
Gin & Tonic
@schrodingers_cat: I remember Ted & Hellen and those awful paintings, but somehow I thought this was somebody different. Not terribly important.
chopper
@Cheryl Rofer:
longer. a black hole of that size will take much more than the age of the universe to evaporate. much, much more.
oatler.
Clearly a fake. Disney has shown us black holes are starry whirlpools that take us through heaven and hell.
NotMax
Let’s see – it is Wednesday. Expect before the weekend some nimrod to publish ‘proof’ this a photo of a Lifesaver candy, taken through a Vaseline-smeared lens. In time to appear on the weekend shows to present the ‘other side.’
MattF
@Cheryl Rofer: And just note, btw, that simply by eye, the observed image is entirely consistent with a fuzzed version of the simulation image.
lamh36
Hey Cheryl, did you see the one with the video annoucement?
Don’t know if it’s a simulation…but it appears to show the black hole as it’s engulfing the galaxy
MattF
@NotMax: Teach the controversy!
Cheryl Rofer
@lamh36: There are videos in the link I gave in the top post. I haven’t checked them all out.
Amir Khalid
I’m waiting for my favourite astronomy YouTuber to put up his video explaining it all to me. He’s quite good.He put up a teaser video on this a couple of days ago.
lamh36
@Cheryl Rofer: cool
eric
@Amir Khalid: If you have not checked out PBS Space Time, do so. It is pretty high level for amateurs. He likely will have a video up in short order.
Brachiator
@NotMax:
At least we haven’t had someone claim to see the face of the Baby Jesus or the Virgin Mary in the center of the black hole.
MattF
@Brachiator: You have to stare at it for several hours before that happens.
Mary G
Science is amazing. One of the things I hate most about the right is their embrace of idiocy.
germy
From The National Science Foundation:
Amir Khalid
@schrodingers_cat:
Ted, Ted Interrupted, Kola Noscopy, Ted & Hellen (with 2 Ls), a few other nyms. A mediocre-on-a-good-day sidewalk portrait artist; and the vilest, most abusive troll I’ve seen here or indeed anywhere on the Intertubes. He defended the child rapist Jerry Sandusky, when that scumbag was in the news, with some hair-raising arguments.
Cermet
To be a bit more accurate – that is a picture of the acceleration disk around the black hole. Not really an image of the black hole. That, of course, is invisible by all definitions. Even close up one does not ever see a black hole. Considering the truly vast distance, and small size of a light hour diameter object, that is really impressive resolution.
As for processing images of astronomical not being real – lol. What the eye, connection nerves and brain does is still mostly a mystery and the processing is a huge unknown, unlike astronomical images; which are very well understood.
Citizen_X
@?BillinGlendaleCA: X-ray glasses, on the other hand, are totally real.
/s
Another Scott
Neato. Morning Edition had a brief expert of Hawking talking about black holes “evaporating” and stuff as part of their story on this.
In other news that has been a long time coming, Mike Elk:
Good, good.
(via LOLGOP)
Cheers,
Scott.
Amir Khalid
@Cermet:
Ahem: that’s the accretion disc, consisting of matter trapped in orbit around the black hole as it spirals in to get eaten. (I knew watching them astronomy videos would come in handy someday.)
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: Ding, Ding, Ding.
E.g. https://balloon-juice.com/2013/01/01/your-tax-dollars-at-work-open-thread/#comment-4103958
Cheers,
Scott.
PAM Dirac
@OzarkHillbilly:
It came up in the Q&A. It seems Sag A* changes on a shorter time scale which makes the reduction to one picture much more difficult. They are working on it, including bringing more telescopes on line to get better time resolution, so they may yet get Sag A* pretty pictures.
Cermet
@Amir Khalid: Correct – a slip. Thanks for the correction!
randy khan
That is so cool.
That is all.
Just One More Canuck
@Cheryl Rofer: so it was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away
Citizen_X
@MattF: But all images are “derived,” in that they depend upon how the instrument detects, and represents, different wavelengths of radiation.
This is just as true for biological eyes as it is for artificial instruments. For instance, many birds, fish, insects, and even some mammals (flying squirrels!) can see in ultraviolet, and so much coloration in nature (e.g. flowers) occurs in those wavelengths. We can detect those but we can never know how those colors look to those animals. In addition, birds are tetrachromal—they have four color receptors, where we have three—so they see detail in light that, again, we will never see.
This what Ted & Whatever militantly refused to understand: that there were other wavelengths out there, and it was acceptable, hell necessary, to represent them in ways humans could see.
Kathleen
@rikyrah: Yes! I am outraged that Hillary has the nerve to compete against her friend Kristin in 2020 primary and I want to know how Kristin feels about that!
Jerzy Russian
@Cermet: you mean “accretion disk”.
J.
@Cheryl Rofer: That is exactly what I thought when I saw the photo. :-O
Jerzy Russian
@Citizen_X: Nice comment. You hit the various nails on their respective heads.
MattF
@Citizen_X: And it may also depend, to some degree, on how human vision is modeled. Wnen I learned a thing or two about audio formats, I was surprised to learn the degree to which audio formats depend on models for human hearing. Of course, it makes excellent sense to do that, particularly for compressed audio formats– but still, what you’re hearing from your mpg file isn’t just acoustic vibrations.
In this particular case of black hole imagery, it looks like the images only have a few ‘features’, so the modeling is probably very simple. But still, I wouldn’t be astohished to learn that there’s literally less there than meets the eye.
NotMax
Had I the Photoshop skill would put together a version of the picture with a suitably fuzzy Waldo peeking out and waving.
Martin P
@Cheryl Rofer: the image showing the jet from M87 is almost certainly not simply a HST image. Jets out of black holes are usually imaged at cm-scale radio frequencies, so the image is likely a composite. Something that the VLA, in our (NM) own back yard, does rather well.
J R in WV
I remember “Ted and Hellen” but must have missed their defense of Jerry Sandusky, fortunately. I have trouble understanding people attempting to defend Penn State’s actions regarding Sandusky and his co-workers. These child abusers appear to sometimes get by through being so flagrant that no one can believe the truth in front of their eyes.
zeecube
When I view the photo, I think “butt”, not black hole. (Yes, I am ashamed.)
Jerzy Russian
@Martin P: I am pretty sure that jet also shows up in the optical.
MazeDancer
Cyclops Happy Face!
jc
I’m still trying to wrap my mind around a gravitational force that is 6 billion times stronger than that of our sun. There’s a punch-line in there somewhere, but I’m too feeble to grab it.
sgrAstar
@?BillinGlendaleCA: ? I do comment on this very blog! Right now I’m feeling pretty miffed about this whole publicity thing. A few years ago I was the focus of a really cool 20-year optical timelapse series of the galactic center (milky way). Now….nada! Hate how M87 gets all the attention. ?
Martin P
@Jerzy Russian: yeah, I guess you’re right about that image. You’ll generally find a lot more images of jets at radio frequencies, and I should have looked more closely.
MattF
@sgrAstar: Well, M87 sat still for its portrait and you were fidgiting all over the place. Grow up!
Cermet
@Jerzy Russian: Your late out of the gate but yes,
Mart
Wish my mom and dad, WWII Manhattan Project vets, were alive to see this. My father would be very amused, and explaining black holes for days. And I would once again try to comprehend the incomprehensible.
Carol
@Cheryl Rofer: Is that jet coming out of or being sucked in to the black hole. And how do you know which it is?
cope
@Betty Cracker: I don’t know that I am the offender but this topic is one of my touchstones. After almost 3 decades teaching astronomy (among other subjects), I eventually reached the point where I explained to my students that the most glorious, impressive, staggeringly beautiful astronomy pictures are almost never what one would see with a naked human eye. The iconic “Pillars of Creation”, the Ant Nebula, SN 1987A, solar prominences, S2 whipping around SgrA* in a 20-year time lapse and such typically require a combination of camera sensors or films sensitive to particular frequencies of light, CCDs capable of capturing a single photon, long exposure periods, post-imaging processing and sometimes composite images. This is not meant to belittle or denigrate such images (you should see how many table-top books of them I have).
Because astronomy is a science almost completely reliant on “looking at things”, I incorporated thousands of images and animations in my lessons. Without them, nobody’s attention (including mine) would probably have been held for even a single class period . However, I also made a point of explaining how clever, creative and ingenious we humans have had to be to observe and image things that our own eyes would never register.
To me, it is all the more remarkable that we are able to create these images. Pictures from the HST or any other instrument are telling us fundamental truths about the universe even if we have to tease, massage, enhance, magnify or in some other way manipulate their data to make it intelligible to our own limited senses.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: It’s not just you.
The Pale Scot
@Amir Khalid:
Bookmarked that dud, thanks
John Revolta
@sgrAstar: It’s the old, old story. One day you’re a star……………………and in a couple of millennia…………POOF!
And everyone’s on to the shiny new thing……………………
John Revolta
Obvious fake. Where are the stars?
//s