Thread by @BadAstronomer

BREAKING:

Astronomers have, for the first time in human history, taken an image of the event horizon of a black hole.

Or, more accurately, its shadow.

Or, even more more accurately, it’s *silhouette*.

syfy.com/syfywire/the-f…

My article hopefully explains all the questions y’all might have. I wish I could’ve written more, since there’s SO. MUCH. TO SAY. but it was already at 2000+ words. and my hands are cramped. :)

One thing: This represents about 5 petabytes worth of astronomical data. That’s 5,000 terabytes, 5 million gigabytes. Reduced down to a few hundred k. Of course, the raw data has lots more info still in it not in the picture per se.

The SMBH in M87 was chosen because it’s HUGE. The one in the center of our galaxy is much closer, but much smaller. By a quirk of geometry, in the sky they’re both about the same size. 0.000000004 of a degree. That’s fairly small.

It's like the Sun and the moon. The Sun is about 400x bigger but 400x farther away, so they appear the same size in our sky. M87's black hole is 1,600x bigger than ours but 2,000x farther away. So it looks a tad bit smaller, but not much.