Physics Seminar: Shep Doeleman '86 on "The Event Horizon Telescope: Imaging and Time-Resolving a Black Hole"
Wednesday, September 30, 4:10 PM - 5:30 PM
Biology 19
This event is open to the public.
Shep Doeleman ’86, MIT Haystack Observatory
A convergence of high bandwidth radio instrumentation and Global mm and submm wavelength astronomical facilities are enabling assembly of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT): a short-wavelength Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) array, which can observe the nearest supermassive black holes with Schwarzschild Radius resolution. Initial observations with the EHT have revealed event horizon scale structure in SgrA*, the 4 million solar mass black hole at the Galactic Center, and in the much more luminous and massive black hole at the center of the giant elliptical galaxy VirgoA. Over the next two to three years, this international project will add new sites and increase observing bandwidth to focus on astrophysics at the black hole boundary. EHT data products will have an unprecedented combination of sensitivity and resolution with excellent prospects for imaging strong General Relativistic signatures, detecting magnetic field structures through full polarization observations, time-resolving black hole orbits, testing GR, and modeling black hole accretion, outflow and jet production. This talk will describe the project and the latest EHT observations.
Doeleman was featured an expansive New York Times feature about black-hole hunters this past summer.
Submitted by Mary Sullivan.
Posted on Sep 24, 2015
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