0000000000373929
AUTHOR
William T. Freeman
First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. IV. Imaging the Central Supermassive Black Hole
We present the first Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) images of M87, using observations from April 2017 at 1.3 mm wavelength. These images show a prominent ring with a diameter of ~40 μas, consistent with the size and shape of the lensed photon orbit encircling the "shadow" of a supermassive black hole. The ring is persistent across four observing nights and shows enhanced brightness in the south. To assess the reliability of these results, we implemented a two-stage imaging procedure. In the first stage, four teams, each blind to the others' work, produced images of M87 using both an established method (CLEAN) and a newer technique (regularized maximum likelihood). This stage allowed us to av…
First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. VII. Polarization of the Ring
Full list of authors: Akiyama, Kazunori; Algaba, Juan Carlos; Alberdi, Antxon; Alef, Walter; Anantua, Richard; Asada, Keiichi; Azulay, Rebecca; Baczko, Anne-Kathrin; Ball, David; Baloković, Mislav; Barrett, John; Benson, Bradford A.; Bintley, Dan; Blackburn, Lindy; Blundell, Raymond; Boland, Wilfred; Bouman, Katherine L.; Bower, Geoffrey C.; Boyce, Hope Bremer, Michael; Brinkerink, Christiaan D.; Brissenden, Roger; Britzen, Silke; Broderick, Avery E.; Broguiere, Dominique; Bronzwaer, Thomas; Byun, Do-Young; Carlstrom, John E.; Chael, Andrew; Chan, Chi-kwan; Chatterjee, Shami; Chatterjee, Koushik; Chen, Ming-Tang; Chen, Yongjun; Chesler, Paul M.; Cho, Ilje; Christian, Pierre; Conway, John E.…
First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. I. the Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole
When surrounded by a transparent emission region, black holes are expected to reveal a dark shadow caused by gravitational light bending and photon capture at the event horizon. To image and study this phenomenon, we have assembled the Event Horizon Telescope, a global very long baseline interferometry array observing at a wavelength of 1.3 mm. This allows us to reconstruct event-horizon-scale images of the supermassive black hole candidate in the center of the giant elliptical galaxy M87. We have resolved the central compact radio source as an asymmetric bright emission ring with a diameter of 42 ± 3 μas, which is circular and encompasses a central depression in brightness with a flux rati…