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How to hunt for a black hole with a telescope the size of Earth

Nature volume 543, pages 478–480 (2017)Cite this article

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A Correction to this article was published on 06 April 2017

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Astronomers hope to grab the first images of an event horizon — the point of no return.

Here's how to catch a black hole. First, spend many years enlisting eight of the top radio observatories across four continents to join forces for an unprecedented hunt. Next, coordinate plans so that those observatories will simultaneously turn their attention to the same patches of sky for several days. Then, collect observations at a scale never before attempted in science — generating 2 petabytes of data each night.

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  • 31 March 2017

    An earlier version of this story erred in saying that Heino Falcke led a team that made one of the first VLBI observations.

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  1. Davide Castelvecchi is a reporter for Nature in London.,

    Davide Castelvecchi

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Astrophysics: Fire in the hole! 2013-Apr-03

Nature's Books & Arts blog: Imaging and imagining black holes

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ESA Black Hole Visualization

Imaging black holes

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Castelvecchi, D. How to hunt for a black hole with a telescope the size of Earth. Nature 543, 478–480 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/543478a

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