UA Researchers Play Key Role In Supermassive Black Hole Image Capture

TUCSON, AZ —Astronomers on Tuesday unveiled the first image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, and researchers from the University of Arizona played a leading role in the effort.

The image of the black hole was produced by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, using observations from a worldwide network of radio telescopes. The UA research team actually provided two of the eight telescopes and performed data analysis that resulted in the image's big unveiling.

The black hole itself isn't a new discovery, but previous attempts to capture images of it had been unsuccessful.

"These unprecedented observations have greatly improved our understanding of what happens at the very center of our galaxy and offer new insights on how these giant black holes interact with their surroundings," said EHT project scientist Geoffrey Bower, who is from the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan.

A spokesman for the UA said about three dozen UA researchers, including students, are part of the EHT team. The four main researchers leading the effort at UA are: Dimitrios Psaltis, Feryal Özel, Chi-Kwan Chan and Dan Marrone.

"This is an exciting day for astrophysics, for the University of Arizona and for all of those fascinated and curious about our galaxy," said Elizabeth "Betsy" Cantwell, UA's senior vice president for research and innovation. "This effort highlights not just the immense complexity of and commitment toward such a discovery, but also the ingenuity of our University of Arizona scientists and the more than 300 other researchers from dozens of institutions around the world that together make up the EHT Collaboration."

According to the UA, the university is a founding partner of the EHT Collaboration, and the school has provided significant resources to the project in the form of hardware, intellectual contributions and publications.

Psaltis, a UA professor of astronomy and physics and principal investigator of the international Black Hole PIRE Project, was the founding project scientist. While, Remo Tilanus, a research professor and astronomer at UA's Steward Observatory, serves as operations manager of the EHT.

Özel, a professor of astronomy and physics a the Steward Observatory, has been a member of the EHT Science Council since its inception and has led the modeling and analysis group.

"We've gotten into everything from very basic theoretical analytic models, all the way to extremely complex, large computational efforts," Özel said. "To do this kind of work, you need new hardware, new types of algorithms and new types of models."

According to the UA, progress on the EHT continues, and the ongoing expansion of the EHT network and continued technological upgrades will allow scientists to share even better images, and even movies, of black holes in the near future.