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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Because of wow. / BREAKING – First Pic Ever Of A Black Hole

BREAKING – First Pic Ever Of A Black Hole

by | 98 Comments

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I’m seeing two versions – this seems to be the official one.

More here.

 

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Reader Interactions

98Comments

  1. 1.

    Betty Cracker

    Looks like what a Krispy Kreme burglar wearing infrared glasses might see if someone left a stray glazed doughnut on the rack.

  2. 2.

    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…

  5. 5.

    ?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.

  14. 14.

    ?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.

  16. 16.

    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.

  18. 18.

    MattF

    Before the reveal, reports said that data was also processed from the Milky Way black hole, so maybe that’s still TBD.

  20. 20.

    ?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.

  23. 23.

    germy

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    This picture is on a scale of 1500 light years,

    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.

  24. 24.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MattF: All the reporting till now that I had seen was directed towards Sagittarius A*, had read nothing about imaging M-87.

  26. 26.

    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.

  28. 28.

    germy

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I’m disappointed. All I see is a black hole.

    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.”

  31. 31.

    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.

  33. 33.

    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.

  34. 34.

    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.

  35. 35.

    Cheryl Rofer

  37. 37.

    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….

  38. 38.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MattF: Just read this at the Guardian:

    When observations were launched in 2017, the EHT had two primary targets. First was Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, which has a mass of about four million suns. The second target, which yielded the image, was a supermassive black hole in the galaxy M87, into which the equivalent of six billion suns of light and matter has disappeared.

    The success of the project hinged on clear skies on several continents simultaneously and exquisite coordination between the eight far-flung teams. Observations at the different sites were coordinated using atomic clocks, called hydrogen masers, accurate to within one second every 100 million years. And, on one night in 2017, everything came together. “We got super lucky, the weather was perfect,” said Ziri Younsi, a member of the EHT collaboration who is based at University College London.

    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* ???????????????????????????????????????)

  39. 39.

    Cheryl Rofer

  42. 42.

    ?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.

  44. 44.

    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.

  45. 45.

    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.

  46. 46.

    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.

  52. 52.

    oatler.

    Clearly a fake. Disney has shown us black holes are starry whirlpools that take us through heaven and hell.

  53. 53.

    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.’

  55. 55.

    lamh36

    Hey Cheryl, did you see the one with the video annoucement?

    @NatureNews
    50m50 minutes ago
    More
    This was the moment the first image of a black hole was announced at the press conference in Brussels #blackhole #EHTblackhole #RealBlackHole #M87
    https://twitter.com/NatureNews/status/1115968651272888320\

    Don’t know if it’s a simulation…but it appears to show the black hole as it’s engulfing the galaxy

  60. 60.

    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.

  61. 61.

    Brachiator

    @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.’

    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.

  63. 63.

    Mary G

    Science is amazing. One of the things I hate most about the right is their embrace of idiocy.

  64. 64.

    germy

    From The National Science Foundation:

    So how were scientists able to “see” the supermassive black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy 53 million light years away? …

    It is still impossible to image the actual black hole (again, that intense gravity let’s nothing escape) so the data being collected is light from the material around the event horizon of the object — the “point of no return” of a black hole. What we are seeing is truly the silhouette of a black hole.

    This is what it is like to stare directly into the void.

  65. 65.

    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.

  66. 66.

    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.

  68. 68.

    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:

    Mike Elk @MikeElk

    BREAKING: @UAW files for new union election at Volkswagen in Chattanooga for 1,700 Workers.

    Vote comes 5 years after UAW lost a union election by 43 votes in a very different political environment

    2:22 PM – 9 Apr 2019

    Good, good.

    (via LOLGOP)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  69. 69.

    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.)

  71. 71.

    PAM Dirac

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    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* ???????????????????????????????????????)

    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.

  75. 75.

    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.

  76. 76.

    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!

  80. 80.

    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.

  81. 81.

    NotMax

    Had I the Photoshop skill would put together a version of the picture with a suitably fuzzy Waldo peeking out and waving.

  82. 82.

    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.

  83. 83.

    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.

  87. 87.

    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.

  88. 88.

    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. ?

  89. 89.

    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.

  92. 92.

    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.

  94. 94.

    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.

  97. 97.

    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……………………

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