The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration released the first image of black hole in April of this year, opening the field of horizon-scale study of the spacetime and environments around black holes via direct imaging. The radio image, taken at a wavelength of 1.3 mm (230 GHz) and using the technique of very-long-baseline interferometry, matches that of lensed photons from relativistic magnetized plasma surrounding a 6.5 billion solar mass black hole at the center of M87. I will introduce the EHT instrument and first results, highlighting the challenges in processing, calibrating, and fitting images and models to the originally petabytes of data from the heterogeneous EHT array. I will also discuss next steps for the EHT, including plans for higher fidelity imaging and movie-making with the addition of antennas on the ground and in space.

Argonne Physics Division Colloquium Schedule