#EHTblackhole

[zandraart]

the eye of the universe opened.... #EHTBlackHole

[nateswinehart]

Sometimes Google Doodles come at you fast o_o

This morning I woke up to news of the incredible Black Hole Photo by the The Event Horizon Telescope. I was blown away and it seemed like a crazy enough idea for us to make Doodle for, so while brushing my teeth I wrote and email to my boss and proposed it.

By the time I was dressed the idea was approved and up to me to create ASAP.  In the car on the way to work I sketched out some (very professional) concept sketches.  

Once I got to the office it was approved and I as told to get to animating!

2.5 hours later the doodle was finished and live on the homepage.  I’ve done some current event doodles before but nothing this fast! So excited it actually got to see the light of day (only to be sucked away), they even let me keep the little E holding on for dear life! Hopefully folks got to see this today and if they didn’t already know about the photo they got to go find out more about the incredible discovery and the people behind it. 

Space blows my mind and if I can use my art to try and make it just a little more accessible for people, it’s worth all the crazy breakneck effort that goes into making it happen :D

[ca-tsuka]

First ever image of a black hole released today.

[stilesisbiles]

First image of a black hole. Science is amazing!

[per-asperaa-ad-astra]

first-ever image of a black hole, 6.5 billion times more massive than the Sun, wider than our whole solar system. The image shows a bright ring formed as light bends in the intense gravity around a black hole. enjoy the video with interstellar OST playing in the background. this is the “first step”.

[thewhitehotroom]

She’s getting closer. #EHTBlackHole #DarkPhoenix arrives June 7.

[thelvadams]

MIT grad student Katie Bouman talking in 2017 about the algorithm she created to take the first ever image of a black hole. [x]

[zenzgtandg]

NASA releases first photo of a black hole

Reddit

[skogebrandt]

Skogebrandt · Black Hole (Instrumental Rework)

Mastering: Magnus Lindberg / Redmount Studios Artwork: 8bitstories

[2001italia]

h/t Lorenzo Sangalli on Facebook

[michaeldavanzo]

Hello Dave

[floofytrainnerd]

[wq0326]

#EHTBlackHole

Some days earlier, Ubisoft: "OMG! Is that me?!"

Today, EA: "Well..."

[occidentaltourist]

The astrophysicist who teamed up with Katie Bouman and others on the black hole image project is not here for anyone’s concern-trolling, sexist bullshit. [x]

Personally, I’m looking forward to his tweets on gay astronomers and Ursula Le Guin!

[sciencenewsforstudents]

It’s hard to say which scientist was the first to set eyes on the glowing ring that makes up the world’s first image of a black hole. But astrophysicist Kazunori Akiyama was certainly one of the earliest.

The image, released to the public on April 10, revealed the dark shadow of the supermassive black hole encircled by swirling gas at the center of the galaxy M87 (SN Online: 4/10/19). This was no quick and easy snapshot. Collecting the data involved eight observatories and more than 200 researchers around the world. Making an image out of that data demanded the skills of more than 50 imaging experts (SN Online: 4/10/19). Akiyama, of MIT Haystack Observatory in Westford, Mass., was a leader of that effort to translate the data into the final, stunning shot.

But before Akiyama and the others could create the image, they had to wait months for others on the Event Horizon Telescope team to analyze and crunch down the five petabytes of raw data — which filled more than half a ton’s worth of hard drives — collected in April 2017. The imaging specialists received the final data in June 2018. “I could not sleep the night before because I was so stressed,” Akiyama says.

He ran his analysis immediately after receiving the data, and within minutes, there it was: the first rendering of the black hole’s shadow. “I was really happy, really excited,” he says.

But then Akiyama started to worry. What if he was the only person to see the black hole’s image? What if the others came up with something different? “After getting the first image, I could not sleep again.”

There was a long slog before Akiyama could be certain of what he saw. To make sure the final image was accurate, and that the results couldn’t be biased by groupthink, the researchers broke into four teams that worked independently and then compared their results. “We told them, don’t talk to each other or anyone else,” astrophysicist Daniel Marrone of the University of Arizona in Tucson, said in an April 10 news conference in Washington, D.C.

The four teams finally met at Harvard University in July 2018 after seven weeks of work. And still, they had to wait a little longer to share the fruits of their labor. “We are extremely careful,” Akiyama says. “In the first day we didn’t compare images.” Instead, they confirmed that each of their pictures was consistent with the data. Then, it was finally time for the big reveal: All the teams saw the black hole’s silhouette.

Akiyama could once again sleep easy. The black hole was real — beyond a shadow of a doubt.

[kuiperkat]

M87 — Black Hole Day

For context, this black hole is located within M87. M87 is a supergiant elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo.

It is one of the most massive galaxies in the local Universe, and part of the Virgo Supercluster.

This image of the galactic core was taken by The Hubble Space Telescope; M87’s blue plasma jet clearly visible (composite image of observations in visible and infrared light)

(📸 credit: Chris Mihos (Case Western Reserve University) ESO; @nasa) #ehtblackhole #RealBlackHole