An amalgamation of photos from eight telescopes
If it fails so much time to obtain the image published this week, it is on the one hand because what is called “a photo” is in fact an amalgamation of photos taken by eight separate telescopes around the world.
Ce collaborative project bringing together 350 scientists is called the Event Horizon Telescope.
But the photo of the other black hole was also an amalgamation of several telescopes. However, this presented, in addition, a major difficulty. Being 1000 times less massive, it changes appearance more quickly: every five minutes, the researchers estimate.
Images taken for a week, it was therefore necessary to obtain a final result which literally eliminates the blurs, and which fills the empty spaces.
Soon a film on the changes of the black hole
But the next step, mentioned Thursdayis nothing less than a film, to show these changes over time.
By taking advantage of the 4000 terabytes of information collected in 2017 – another superlative – and probably other observations made since, in 2021 and 2022. A film will not tell the experts anything more, but we can expect other ‘oh’ and ‘ah’ of admiration.