If the headline sounds familiar, that's because the Event Horizon Telescope's (EHT) first target was M87*, a supermassive black hole in the Virgo cluster. Despite being ~2000 times farther away...
If the headline sounds familiar, that's because the Event Horizon Telescope's (EHT) first target was M87*, a supermassive black hole in the Virgo cluster. Despite being ~2000 times farther away than the black hole in the center of the Milky Way, M87* is ~1000 times wider (roughly the size of our solar system), so the angular sizes of both black holes are about the same.
Which is to say we can't use ETH to image any black hole – only those that are exceptionally close or exceptionally large.
If the headline sounds familiar, that's because the Event Horizon Telescope's (EHT) first target was M87*, a supermassive black hole in the Virgo cluster. Despite being ~2000 times farther away than the black hole in the center of the Milky Way, M87* is ~1000 times wider (roughly the size of our solar system), so the angular sizes of both black holes are about the same.
Which is to say we can't use ETH to image any black hole – only those that are exceptionally close or exceptionally large.
Related video from Veritasium:
A Picture of the Milky Way's Supermassive Black Hole