News

Black hole simulations in virtual reality.

Flying past a black hole in a simulator: Jordy Davelaar and colleagues observe supermassive black holes in virtual reality

November 20, 2018

At the centre of our own galaxy there is a black hole, called Sagittarius A*. In anticipation of the first actual photograph of a black hole, an international project that also involves astronomers of Radboud University, Jordy Davelaar and colleagues have built a virtual reality (VR) simulation of the phenomenon. The VR simulation was published in the journal Computation Astrophysics and Cosmology on November 19th.

You can find the simulation on...

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Principal Component Analysis illustration, adapted from Medeiros et al. 2018.

Planning for images of a black hole: New image analysis tools presented in an article in AAS Nova

September 27, 2018
The EHT is closer than ever to its goal, as the project continues to increase its resolving power and sensitivity as more telescopes join the system. Another important aspect of this project exists, however: the ability to analyze and characterize the images it produces in a meaningful way. Recently, a team of scientists led by Lia Medeiros (University of Arizona, University of California Santa Barbara) has demonstrated that a novel approach — principal component analysis — may be a useful tool in this process. Learn more about it in... Read more about Planning for images of a black hole: New image analysis tools presented in an article in AAS Nova
Artistic Impression of a a black hole. Credit: World Science Festival

World Science Festival: shedding new light on the current state of the art and the future of black hole research

August 28, 2018
At World Science Festival in New York, Andrea Ghez of UCLA, Vicky Kalogera of Northwestern University, and Shep Doeleman and Cumrun Vafa of Harvard University, shed new light on the current state of the art and the future of black hole research in a panel hosted by physicist and author Brian Greene: ... Read more about World Science Festival: shedding new light on the current state of the art and the future of black hole research
The Greenland Telescope

Greenland Telescope, the only submillimeter-wave astronomical observatory in the Arctic Circle, opens for science operations

May 30, 2018
To study the most extreme objects in the Universe, astronomers sometimes have to go to extreme places themselves. Taking advantage of the excellent atmospheric conditions in Greenland, the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) of Academia Sinica in Taiwan, and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the USA, collaborated to build the Greenland Telescope... Read more about Greenland Telescope, the only submillimeter-wave astronomical observatory in the Arctic Circle, opens for science operations
Two simple models for Sgr A* emission.

A global array of telescopes, including APEX for the first time, reveals the finest details so far in Sgr A* in a newly published study

May 26, 2018

Results based on data obtained with the 4-station Event Horizon Telescope back in 2013 were published in a peer-reviewed journal, showing tantalizing, but not yet conclusive, structure in Sgr A* on the scale of about 3 Schwarzschild radii of the black hole. This was the first time that the APEX telescope joined the EHT array as the first mm-wave Very Long Baseline Array (VLBI) station in the southern hemisphere. Read more about the new findings in this press release...

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Comparison of simulated Einsteinian and dilaton black hole images.

Can we tell Einsteinian black holes apart from non-Einsteinian? -- New insights from Goethe University Frankfurt supercomputer simulations

April 18, 2018
Theoretical astrophysicists at Goethe University Frankfurt, and members of the EHT collaboration, shed new light on this question by computing simulated images of hot gas feeding non-Einsteinian black holes. While at present it is hard to tell apart a "dilaton" black hole from a standard Einsteinian one, it may be possible with future observations employing the extended and improved EHT array. Read the original story released by the ... Read more about Can we tell Einsteinian black holes apart from non-Einsteinian? -- New insights from Goethe University Frankfurt supercomputer simulations