Stargazing Event Horizon Telescope Results Released Yesterday (April 10, 2019)

[jedishrfu]

A new video about this from one of my favorite channels, Sixty Symbols:

Did he say "its like taking a picture of a gallstone on the moon"?

I read elsewhere the the 40 uarcsecs was like taking the picture of a DVD on the moon.

Here's more on black holes and the prior illustrations used to represent them to the public:

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/1/8/16822272/black-hole-looks-like-what

and lastly Kip's excellent book on the Science of Interstellar with their computer simulations:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393351378/?tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[jedishrfu]

The colours could be are arbitrary? There are other (amazing) images from Hubble of distant galaxies / star nurseries where they overlay infra red and other frequencies out of the visible spectrum. Just so we have a more detailed image of what is there.

Yellow to red could be shorter to longer wavelength? Or difference in intensity.

Yes, this uis one of the reasons kids get disappointed with Astronomy. They see these fantastic images and don't realize that the colors are describing measured data and aren't the actual colors. In fact, in a telescope you'll see only star brightness ie black and white and it just doesn't look like these amazing works of art.

 

[DennisN]

Did he say "its like taking a picture of a gallstone on the moon"?

I heard "golf ball".

 

[jedishrfu]

I heard "golf ball".

Ahh, okay that makes sense. He really sped through that and I tried listening again at higher volume but just couldn't catch it.

Do you think a gallstone is comparable to a golf ball in size? haha

Turns out yes.

https://www.webmd.com/digestive-disorders/understanding-gallstones-basics#1

 

[mfb]

Yeah, I get that. But how did they map the radio signal frequencies and intensities to those yellows and reds that the popular press is fawning over? Were the simulations earlier in this thread also arbitrary in their color mapping from expected radio emissions, or were they meant to simulate what the visible light emissions would look like?

I'm definitely not meaning to give you and @mfb a hard time at all. Great images. I just prefer to understand where the false color image mappings came from (and I wish astronomy images would be explicitly labeled in the corner "False Color Image" when it's not a true visible light image). Thanks.

They chose a color code that some software package provided, the publication will have some details. You'll find a similar color scheme in many other publications. The simulations used the same scheme, sure.

This has absolutely nothing to do with whatever visible light the accretion disk emits.

 

[DennisN]

Do you think a gallstone is comparable to a golf ball in size? haha

Turns out yes.

Ouch. And if we hit a golf ball into Sagittarius A* would it count as a hole-in-one?

 

[Orodruin]

Do you think a gallstone is comparable to a golf ball in size? haha

Turns out yes.

Fermi estimate it! A golf ball is not order 0.1 cm and not order 10 cm in radius, so order 1 cm. A gall stone is not order 0.1 cm and not order 10 cm in radius, so order 1 cm. The exact same size!

 

[russ_watters]

Yeah, I get that. But how did they map the radio signal frequencies and intensities to those yellows and reds that the popular press is fawning over? Were the simulations earlier in this thread also arbitrary in their color mapping from expected radio emissions, or were they meant to simulate what the visible light emissions would look like?

I'm definitely not meaning to give you and @mfb a hard time at all. Great images. I just prefer to understand where the false color image mappings came from (and I wish astronomy images would be explicitly labeled in the corner "False Color Image" when it's not a true visible light image). Thanks.

It's totally arbitrary. These colors were probably picked because they "look right", but radio waves are used here because there is little or no visible light to determine a color. Insofar as "color" is just a name for different bands of wavelengths, the "color" of this image is "microwave".

Usually false color images are labeled, but not always, and I agree it is a bit irritating when it is way off. There are a lot of Hubble photos that are visible or near ir where the colors are purposely way off.

Most of my photos are taken in greyscale, with filters. Indeed even a consumer camera gets its color with a grid of filters and software to map the colors to the proper pixels.

For many of my solar photos I used narrow-band Hydrogen Alpha spectral line filter - which is deep red - and mapped it to a yellow I chose because it looked right.

Hydrogen alpha also works really well for the moon by cutting down the glare. So those photos I just leave greyscale since the moon is an almost perfect grey (black) even though I took the images in red light.

 

[russ_watters]

...
FYI, there is actually a defined "Hubble Palette" for color mapping:

...A composite of narrowband image data, the telescopic view captures the characteristic emission from ionized sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms mapped to red, green, and blue hues in the popular Hubble Palette.

https://apod.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/apod/apod_search?tquery="hubble palette"
http://www.mcwetboy.com/mcwetlog/2010/04/falsecolour_astrophotography_explained.php

There's a chart in the second one that shows for example the Ha filter, which is red, mapped to Green and the O-III, which is green, mapped to blue.

I suppose it is most common to see wavelengths larger than visible to be red and smaller than visible to be blue in false color images.

 

[OmCheeto]

A new video about this from one of my favorite channels, Sixty Symbols:

Did you watch the video on M87 they recommended at the end?
I thought it was interesting that the Earth orbits M87.

​

M87 - Infinity in your Hand - Deep Sky Videos​

DeepSkyVideos​

Video by Brady Haran​

Published on Oct 9, 2018​

Becky Smethurst discusses the massive and superfreaky M87.​

Recorded with Dr Becky Smethurst as part of the Sixty Symbols Ogden Fellowship at the University of Nottingham.​

​

"The Earth goes round the Sun​

The Sun goes round the Milky Way​

The Milky Way goes round the center of the Local Group​

And the Local Group goes round the center of the Virgo Supercluster​

​

The center of the Virgo Supercluster is M87​

​

Technically, the Earth is going round M87"​

Paraphrased for brevity.​

​

Livestream e.g. here at ESO.

I wonder how many livestreams there were. I watched both that one, and the following:



National Science Foundation/EHT Press Conference Announcing First Image of Black Hole
National Science Foundation
Published Apr 10, 2019

I found the following information interesting, and somewhat entertaining:

​

@13:40​

Dan Marrone, AP of Astronomy, Univ of AZ​

"It took 7 days to collect 5 petabytes of data​

recorded on >100 toasterish sized modules​

HALF A TON of hard drives"​

​

Just notes I scribbled while watching. "toasterish sized modules" are my words.​

​

That's a lot of hard drives!

 

[DennisN]

Did you watch the video on M87 they recommended at the end?

No, but I will watch it now, thanks!

 

[DennisN]

"The Earth goes round the Sun
The Sun goes round the Milky Way
The Milky Way goes round the center of the Local Group
And the Local Group goes round the center of the Virgo Supercluster
The center of the Virgo Supercluster is M87
Technically, the Earth is going round M87"

An very fascinating video! Worthy for posting in "Our Beautiful Universe" thread, so I'll post it there too.

 

[DaveC426913]

This is a very good explanation of what the black hole image shows.

Indeed. An excellent explanatory video.

So, based on what we are seeing, can we deduce at what angle the accretion disc is to us?

 

[BillTre]

xkcd has an interesting take on the M87 black hole:

 

[robphy]

Here is Katie Bouman's TED talk "How to take a picture of a black hole"


while she was finishing her PhD at MIT in 2017.

She's been a postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
and will be an Assistant Professor at Caltech in Fall 2019.
https://people.csail.mit.edu/klbouman/

And this article on the Comp Sci grad student who helped construct the image from the noisy data:

https://www.sciencealert.com/this-2...lped-bring-us-the-first-image-of-a-black-hole

 

[CookieSalesman]

What does the picture of the black hole actually imply?

I had some begruding idea that this may be sensationaism. Maybe the picture is just too cool for everyone. Is this the reason that it's just blown up everywhere?

 

[Orodruin]

Here is Katie Bouman's TED talk "How to take a picture of a black hole"


while she was finishing her PhD at MIT in 2017.

She's been a postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
and will be an Assistant Professor at Caltech in Fall 2019.
https://people.csail.mit.edu/klbouman/

I remember watching that TED talk a couple of years back!

 

[anorlunda]

And this article on the Comp Sci grad student who helped construct the image from the noisy data:

I agree. I've seen her speak. She is a very impressive young woman.

 

[sophiecentaur]

There are no 'warning' messages in the press about the fact that the Radio telescope images are not optical images. For interferometry, they have to use phase sensitive detection, which is hard to achieve for optical frequencies over a big area telescope. However, resolution is potentially higher for short wavelengths and there is a factor of about 10⁶ between optical and microwave wavelengths. So it is not beyond the realms of possibility to use a smaller optical telescope array with the same resolution. The actual area of microwave dishes is not in proportion to the aperture width so the signal level would not scale as badly as it might seem.
All we need is optical amplifiers with sufficiently low noise performance (and a few other improvements) and then we could actually 'see' the black holes.

 

[davenn]

There are no 'warning' messages in the press about the fact that the Radio telescope images are not optical images.

Yes, True, and this has annoyed me a lot because (as I commented much earlier in this thread) it is making people think that are looking at an optical image of a black hole ... and this misunderstanding is widespread across the net

 

[sophiecentaur]

Yes, True,

However - and I felt a bit bad about my comment. I forgot to mention it was a fantastic bit of radiophotography. The other signs of the presence of a black hole (orbiting stars and lensing) are not really as 'obvious' as a real shadow.
10/10 for the project, I say. The quantity of data involved in the processing was pretty stunning.

 

[Janus]

Indeed. An excellent explanatory video.

So, based on what we are seeing, can we deduce at what angle the accretion disc is to us?

It's been estimated that the polar axis of the BH is ~17 degrees to the line of sight.

 

[JLowe]

Yes, True, and this has annoyed me a lot because (as I commented much earlier in this thread) it is making people think that are looking at an optical image of a black hole ... and this misunderstanding is widespread across the net

A lot of people, probably most people, think most images they see from space are actually what their eyes would see.

 

[DaveC426913]

It's been estimated that the polar axis of the BH is ~17 degrees to the line of sight.

Ah. So we're looking down/up its pole.

That is so damned cool.

 

[davenn]

A lot of people, probably most people, think most images they see from space are actually what their eyes would see.

Yes, even with optical images, that is true. I spend a lot of time talking to people about buying a telescope and explaining that what they see in the nice pic's is not what they will see through the eyepiece.
The come to understand that with a good home scope and camera, they can produce images like the ones they see online etc but it takes some serious effort with gear, exposures and processingDave

 

[lpetrich]

In the ESO's press conference, someone mentioned that it is hard to get a black hole's angular momentum from the shape of its shadow. So I tracked down how one calculates a BH's shadow's boundary, and I found [1801.00860] Shadows and strong gravitational lensing: a brief review. The math is a bit involved, but I implemented it in Mathematica, and I found that the shadow is approximately circular but offset toward the receding part of the limb. The radius is close to the radius in the nonrotating (Schwarzschild) limit: $3 \sqrt{3} M$, and the offset is $- (2a) ( n_{obs} \times n_{AM})$ with the observation and the angular-momentum directions. M = mass, a = (ang mom)/M, multiplied by G/c^2 to get lengths.

 

[lpetrich]

Messier 87 - Wikipedia -- someone updated that article very quickly. For the central black hole, M87*, the article quoted mass estimates like $(3.5 \pm 0.8) \times 10^9$ and $(6.6 \pm 0.4) \times 10^9$ solar masses, with a 2016 estimate of $7.22{}^{+0.34}_{-0.40} \times 10^9$ solar masses. The EHT consortium's estimate is $(6.5 \pm 0.2_{stat} \pm 0.7_{sys}) \times 10^9$ solar masses.

Those other mass estimates were made using the velocities of the stars and interstellar gas that surround the BH. They are well within the Newtonian limit, so the success of extrapolating toward the BH's event horizon is a success for GR, along with the approximately circular shape of the BH's shadow.

 

[member659127]

All of us have seen the newly published beautiful image of the black hole. I was thinking about the feature in the photo regarding the luminosity differences between two sides (a clear result of rotation of accretion disk and relativistic beaming). I found myself thinking about the relativistic beaming phenomenon.

If you apply Galilean velocity addition you still get some beaming effect (classical aberration of light, etc...). Of course the effect gets much more enhanced if you use the Lorentzian addition of velocities and drammatically turns into a "headlight" sort of phenomenon if you approach speed of light. I agree with that...

But phenomenologically it is not something strictly "relativistic" right? I would argue "relativistic" in the context of "relative motion" and not necessarily special theory of relativity (SR). But people have obviously using it in the context of SR. Or am I missing something? The nomenclature seems somehow assertive of SR.

 

[davenn]

All of us have seen the newly published beautiful image of the black hole. I was thinking about the feature in the photo

Again as I and others have stated earlier in the thread ... This is not a photo of the black hole ...
It is not an optical imageDave

 

[member659127]

Again as I and others have stated earlier in the thread ... This is not a photo of the black hole ...
It is not an optical imageDave

I am very well aware of this, thank you for reminding anyway. However, totally irrelevant to what I am saying I think... beaming occurs in every wavelength.

PS. I have posted this at general physics discussion under a totally different title to discuss the naming of the physical phenomenon, however it was moved here as a comment for some reason, it is loosely related to this topic. FYI

 

[pinball1970]

No, but I will watch it now, thanks!

Can you send the link please?

 

[DennisN]

Can you send the link please?

Hi, go to the post by OmCheeto (post #60 in this thread) and go down to the M87 video from Deep Sky Videos. If you click on it there you ought to be able to see it. Otherwise, try clicking on the video with the right mouse button and select "open in new tab" or "open in new window" or something, depending on what browser you are using. If it does not work, you can PM me.

 

[pinball1970]

Hi, go to the post by OmCheeto (post #60 in this thread) and go down to the M87 video from Deep Sky Videos. If you click on it there you ought to be able to see it. Otherwise, try clicking on the video with the right mouse button and select "open in new tab" or "open in new window" or something, depending on what browser you are using. If it does not work, you can PM me.

Thanks!

 

[davenn]

. However, totally irrelevant to what I am saying I think... beaming occurs in every wavelength.

have no idea what you mean by that

 

[pinball1970]

Hi, go to the post by OmCheeto (post #60 in this thread) and go down to the M87 video from Deep Sky Videos. If you click on it there you ought to be able to see it. Otherwise, try clicking on the video with the right mouse button and select "open in new tab" or "open in new window" or something, depending on what browser you are using. If it does not work, you can PM me.

Great video. The interviewer sounds like the guy who did Tree 3 and Graham's number. The maths guy? I'll see if I can find him on YT

 

[sophiecentaur]

Again as I and others have stated earlier in the thread ... This is not a photo of the black hole ...
It is not an optical imageDave

The problem has been in the use of the word "photo". If the word "Image' had been used for the pictures we have seen then we might not have seen so much confusion. Hubble is responsible for people assuming that we can 'see' anything out there.

 

[davenn]

The problem has been in the use of the word "photo". If the word "Image' had been used for the pictures we have seen then we might not have seen so much confusion.

Yup, Exactly

 

[member659127]

have no idea what you mean by that

It means you will see the same intensity difference whether the signal you are receiving is light or radio waves or any other part of the spectrum.

The word "photo" was referring to what I am seeing on the screen with my "eyes". (Really meaningless discussion for me, will not comment further on the things which are outside of my main point.)

 

[pinball1970]

Again as I and others have stated earlier in the thread ... This is not a photo of the black hole ...
It is not an optical imageDave

I have no idea how they put the data together for the image, I am more interested in what happens next.
Yeah it's amazing but it's blurred and does not have much detail
I am not being negative, the images are reminiscent of what the CMBR started out as
More telescope have been mentioned but that must have limitations? The size of the earth? Could any data from the JW Telescope be used? (when it is launched 2021)

 

[PAllen]

@erbahar ,
Relativistic beaming results from the joint action of two phenomena: aberration, and Doppler. Both occur for radio waves just as readily as visible light. Aberration really has no valid derivation before SR - the one used by Bradley requires a corpuscular theory of light where speed of source affects speed of light, which is c only relative to its emission source. Doppler has a pre-SR derivation, but the predicted amount for a high speed jet would be way too small. Beaming is considered relativistic because it is this joint effect of a pure SR phenomenon and SR augmented Doppler.

 

[member659127]

@erbahar ,
Relativistic beaming results from the joint action of two phenomena: aberration, and Doppler. Both occur for radio waves just as readily as visible light. Aberration really has no valid derivation before SR - the one used by Bradley requires a corpuscular theory of light where speed of source affects speed of light, which is c only relative to its emission source. Doppler has a pre-SR derivation, but the predicted amount for a high speed jet would be way too small. Beaming is considered relativistic because it is this joint effect of a pure SR phenomenon and SR augmented Doppler.

Thank you for the insightfull answer. I am going to discuss the physics of the image with my modern physics class next week and want to demonstrate this. I am going to first discuss it in a classical picture. (That is something I always do to explain the phenomenology first not to intimidate them with SR directly which they have to replace their "common sense" with pure math.)

What you pointed out as the Bradley's explanation is just EXACTLY what I mean by Galilean addition of velocities by the way. I didn't know the name and history, thank you for that and also thank you for pointing out the Doppler shift has a secondary (or indirect I can say) effect on the intensity via the relationship of frequency with the energy. That was something I missed also.

I am not totally convinced though that all of these are "pure" SR effects. What I would say pure relativistic is stuff like time dilation, length contraction, redefinition of momentum, energy, etc... (One interesting aspect is that the relationship of frequency with energy is not SR but "pure" QM which is also non-classical anyway)

Thanks again!
Dogan

 

[mfb]

I have no idea how they put the data together for the image, I am more interested in what happens next.
Yeah it's amazing but it's blurred and does not have much detail
I am not being negative, the images are reminiscent of what the CMBR started out as
More telescope have been mentioned but that must have limitations? The size of the earth? Could any data from the JW Telescope be used? (when it is launched 2021)

James Webb is an infrared/visible telescope. You need a radio telescope, radio telescopes need to be big - problem one. You need to know the position of this radio telescope in space better than the wavelength (1 mm in this case) - problem two. And then you need to find a way to transfer hundreds of terabytes from this telescope to Earth - problem three.
Of course people are studying if this is possible, but it needs major R&D and will need at least many years before it can be launched.

 

[anorlunda]

What a great teaching event this news has become. Most questions and answers have been great. BH physics, GR physics, light, astronomy, observation methods, data reduction methods. I am hopeful that many people will be motivated to increase their understanding in all of those topics.

 

[PAllen]

(One interesting aspect is that the relationship of frequency with energy is not SR but "pure" QM which is also non-classical anyway)

Thanks again!
Dogan

That frequency determines energy per quanta is quantum. That energy of an EM emission shifts with relative motion exactly per the Doppler formula is pure SR, and was derived classically in Einstein's 1905 paper. In fact, the complete description of relativistic beaming is present in Einstein's 1905 paper, which is one of its distinguishing features from other work that anticipates almost all the rest of it.

 

[hmmm27]

On behalf of everybody not a scientist, but also not satisfied with popsci "artist's impressions" (beyond an appreciation of the wonderful artistry), this is just freakin' awesome.

 

[OmCheeto]

Great video. The interviewer sounds like the guy who did Tree 3 and Graham's number. The maths guy? I'll see if I can find him on YT

That would be Brady Haran [wiki entry]. He has at least 15 different Youtube channels. He's probably my favorite internet science communicator, in that, he asks real scientists the questions, and they try and answer them. Often times he asks that things be explained without using a lot of maths, which makes for some very funny sounds and facial expressions from the scientists.

 

[lpetrich]

Easiest-to-observe black holes. I've included a stellar one along with the galaxy-center supermassive ones. Source: Wikipedia

Galaxy	Distance	Mass	Sch Radius	Sch Rad Ang Xtnt	Shadow Ang Dia
Cygnus X-1	1.9 kpc	14.8 Msun	44 km	7.4*10^(-16) rad	0.80 nnas
Our Galaxy: Sgr A*	7.860 kpc	4.05 * 10^6 Msun	0.080 AU	4.9*10^(-11) rad	53 mcas
Andromeda Galaxy	778 kpc	1.7 * 10^8 Msun	3.3 AU	2.1*10^(-11) rad	22 mcas
Messier 87	16.4 Mpc	6.5 * 10^9 Msun	130 AU	3.8*10^(-11) rad	41 mcas

mcas = microarcseconds, nnas = nanoarcseconds. Notice how small Cygnus X-1's black hole is.

I think that the Event Horizon Telescope consortium may take on the Andromeda Galaxy after doing Sgr A*. However, its central BH's mass has big error bars on it.

 

[lpetrich]

List of most massive black holes - Wikipedia -- I went through the entire list, and I followed the links to find out what the objects' distances were. From that, I calculated each BH's shadow diameter, 3*sqrt(3) times its Schwarzschild radius. It is in microarcseconds.

Where	Ang Dia
Milky Way Sgr A*	56
Messier 87	45
Andromeda Galaxy	30
NGC 1600	29
NGC 4889	23
IC 1101	22
NGC 6166	22
NGC 3115	21
NGC 1281	17
NGC 1270	16
Sombrero Galaxy	11
NGC 3842	10

The Andromeda Galaxy and NGC 1600 are next after Sgr A* and M87*, followed by several other galaxies.

 

[lpetrich]

I must note about my previous post that it has a rather optimistic estimate for the Andromeda Galaxy's central black hole's mass. I've seen lower estimates.

An obvious way to get more baseline for VLBI is to go into outer space, but not many radio-astronomy satellites have been launched, satellites like HALCA and Spektr-R.

 

[Zeke137]

davenn said:

Just in that 144MHz doesn't have a colour or one that is different from, say, 440 MHz

...and there speaks a radio ham, if I'm not much mistaken :)