320 - The Event Horizon Telescope

Guest: Heino Falcke (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heino_Falcke) Host: Markus Voelter Shownoter: Kolja Dummann

A few months ago, a collaboration called the Event Horizon Telescope (eventhorizontelescope.org) 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 (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-long-baseline_inter…), 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 (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heino_Falcke) | Very Long Baseline Interferometry (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-long-baseline_inter…) | Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_hundred_meter_Apert…) | Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atacama_Large_Millimeter…) | Very Large Array (VLA) (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Large_Array) | Paranal Observatory (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranal_Observatory) | BlackHoleCam (blackholecam.org)

The EHT
00:29:54
A book about the EHT (amazon.com/Einsteins-Shadow-Black-Astronomers-…) | Heinrich Hertz Submillimeter Telescope (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Hertz_Submillim…) | Submillimeter Array (SMA) (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submillimeter_Array) | Greenland Telescope (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_Telescope) | Thule Air Base (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_Air_Base) | National Science Foundation (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundat…) | Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atacama_Pathfinder_Exper…)

Image reconstruction
01:05:59
Fourier transform (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_transform) | en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLEAN_(algorithm)