, 14 tweets, 9 min read Read on Twitter
In few minutes, astronomers across the globe will hold six major press conferences simultaneously to announce the first results of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), which was designed precisely for that purpose ow.ly/bSMf30ompQi. Watch LIVE: ow.ly/G0mT30onYFi
More about the Event Horizon Telescope, an international collaboration aiming to capture the first image of a black hole by creating a virtual Earth-sized telescope eventhorizontelescope.org
This is the moment that change everything in astronomy and astrophysics. This is the first-ever picture of the event horizon of a black hole. M87's one #BlackHoleDay #EventHorizonTelescope
It looks like a ring of fire, it has a diameter of billions km. It may look like something disappointing, but it's finally real #BlackHoleDay #EventHorizonTelescope
Science and #EHT turned something which has been a mere mathematical entity for years, into a physical object that can be viewed and measured repeatedly. It took time, but we got it #EHTBlackHole
The physics of the shape of what it may look like a ring of fire, tells us that something is rotating there: it may be either the black hole itself, or the matter orbiting it #BlackHoleDay #EventHorizonTelescope
That "something rotating" may be the black hole itself, matter, but more importantly light [source of the gif: ow.ly/maAh30oo3r7]
The first-ever image of a black hole (M87 or Virgo A, left) is here compared with a simulation (middle) and the simulation blurred to the expected resolution of the telescope (right) buff.ly/2KmG5Md
M87's supermassive black hole is billions of times the Sun's mass: estimates have ranged from (3.5 ± 0.8) × 10⁹ M☉ to (6.6 ± 0.4) × 10⁹ M☉. The disk rotates at velocities of up to 1,000 km/s & spans a maximum diameter of 0.12 parsecs (0.39 light-years) buff.ly/2D5lwxK
This is the scale of M87's black hole, which we saw today in direct observations vs our Solar System vs M60's central black hole [source of the gif: buff.ly/2Ko8qBH]
How we got the picture of the event horizon of a black hole:
To wrap this thread up, just a note about the emotional balance too: it was a thrilling afternoon and the teams' explanations were amazing, but when Monica Moscibrodzka @mmosc_m talked, her voice told about an immense passion, and I could not hold back some tears #BlackHoleDay
Relevant #xkcd related to the scale of M87's supermassive black hole scale vs out Solar System m.xkcd.com/2135/
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