APOD: 2022 May 1 - First Horizon Scale Image of a Black Hole

Good afternoon, Rallypoint, and welcome to the May 1st Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD): "First Horizon Scale Image of a Black Hole." You may remember when this image first made the scientific headlines a little more than three years ago. The image shows the shadow of the supermassive black hole in the center of Messier 87 (M87), an elliptical galaxy some 55 million light-years from Earth. This black hole is 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun. The image was produced from data gathered by eight ground-based radio telescopes (known as the Event Horizon Telescope, or EHT) located around the globe, operating together as if they were one telescope the size of our entire planet.

Since 2019, three additional telescopes have joined the EHT team: The Greenland Telescope (yes, in Greenland), The Noema (Northern Extended Millimeter Array) Telescope high in the French Alps, and the Kitt Peak 12-meter Telescope, part of the Arizona Radio Observatory (ARO). We've come a long way from the days of the first camera, haven't we?