They are meeting to discuss how this objective can be achieved

Jan 19, 2012 07:43 GMT  ·  By

Black holes are extremely fascinating structures, and they've captured the imagination of astronomers for a wider variety of reasons. This is why a new meeting is taking place this week, where experts want to establish what is required in order for us to become able to photograph black holes directly.

In effect, these investigators want to obtain the first image of a black hole, something that has never been achieved before for a very simple reason – the singularity absorbs everything we throw at it.

In order to understand precisely how difficult this task is, it's important to remember that such a dark behemoth exerts such a huge gravitational pull on its surroundings that it does not allow anything moving close to it to escape; this includes even light.

This is the main reason why astronomers named the structures black holes. They are the blackest things that ever existed, simply because they don't even reflect back a single photon. This is why we can't see them. However, we can infer their existence through a variety of indirect methods.

What researchers attending the conference are meeting to discuss is the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), an Earth-size virtual instrument made up of radio telescopes that could theoretically be able to see a black hole directly.

This worldwide network of telescopes should theoretically be powerful enough to allow investigators to peer deep into the heart of Sagittarius A*, the massive X-ray source at the core of the Milky Way.

“Nobody has ever taken a picture of a black hole. We are going to do just that,” explains University of Arizona (UA) Steward Observatory expert Dimitrios Psaltis. He is one of the co-organizers of the conference. The meeting started in Tucson, Arizona yesterday, January 18.

The thing these researchers are proposing would have been laughed at just 5 years ago. They explain that the level of technological sophistication required to even attempt such a project is only available today. “Now we have the technological means to take a stab at it,” says Sheperd Doeleman.

The astronomer, who is the principal investigator for the EHT, is based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in Cambridge. He explains that the worldwide network will contain around 50 radio telescopes, Space reports.

“In essence, we are making a virtual telescope with a mirror that is as big as the Earth. Each radio telescope we use can be thought of as a small silvered portion of a large mirror. With enough such silvered spots, one can start to make an image,” Doeleman concludes.