- The 2018 observations revealed a familiar shadow of the same size EHT found in 2017, when it took the first image of a black hole.
- A black hole is an astronomical object with a gravitational pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape it.
- Black hole’s gravitation pull becomes this strong at the Event Horizon, the boundary from within which a particle cannot escape.
- Event horizon captures any light passing through it, and the distorted space-time around it causes light to be redirected through gravitational lensing.
- These two effects produce a dark zone that astronomers refer to as the event horizon shadow.
- Gravitational Lensing occurs when a massive celestial body such as a galaxy cluster causes a sufficient curvature of spacetime for the path of light around it to be visibly bent, as if by a lens.
- The body causing the light to curve is accordingly called a gravitational lens.
- It is an observable example of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
- According to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, time and space are fused together in a quantity known as spacetime.
- Massive objects cause spacetime to curve and gravity is simply the curvature of spacetime.
- As light travels through spacetime, the path taken by light will also be curved by an object’s mass.
Event Horizon Telescope (EHT)
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