Astronomers are hoping to photograph a black hole for the first time [View all]

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http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2012/01/160_103646.html

Massive black hole gets ready for its close-up

01-29-2012 15:53

By Dale McFeatters

Black holes are perhaps the most powerful, least understood phenomenon in the universe, but no one has ever really seen one. Astronomers are hoping to photograph one for the first time by linking 50 radio telescopes around the world so that Earth becomes essentially a single giant radio telescope.

The project is called the Event Horizon Telescope, and it will be aimed at a black hole in our own Milky Way galaxy. This black hole is of "supermassive" size, 4 million times the mass of the sun. It is so far away ― almost 26,000 light-years ― that if it could be seen, astronomers say it would be about the size of a grapefruit on the moon.

Black holes, created when giant stars collapse in on themselves, have a gravity so dense that nothing caught up in them ― light, energy, matter ― escapes. Thus, astronomers won't see the actual black hole, but conclusive evidence of its presence ―the dust and gas circling around the hole, like water circling the drain in a bathtub, explained one.

As the matter circles and becomes ever more compressed, it will be heated to a billion degrees or more, creating a "glow" outlining the black hole that can be detected from Earth.