320 - The Event Horizon Telescope

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Guest: Heino Falcke Host: Markus Voelter Shownoter: Kolja Dummann

A few months ago, a collaboration called the Event Horizon Telescope presented the first direct image of a black hole; or more specifically, of the radiation created by accelerated particles at its event horizon. The EHT is a Very Large Baseline Interferometer, in which radio telescopes all over the world are computationally connected to obtain resolutions that are not possible with one telescope. In the episode I chat with Heino Falcke, the chair of the EHT science committee, about the science, the telescope, what it took to get it going, and image reconstruction.

Introduction

00:02:47

Heino Falcke | Very Long Baseline Interferometry | Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) | Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) | Very Large Array (VLA) | Paranal Observatory | BlackHoleCam

The EHT

00:29:54

A book about the EHT | Heinrich Hertz Submillimeter Telescope | Submillimeter Array (SMA) | Greenland Telescope | Thule Air Base | National Science Foundation | Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX)

Image reconstruction

01:05:59

Fourier transform | CLEAN