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Do we have pictures of black holes?
Two years ago, astronomers managed to photograph a black hole for the very first time. The team behind the Event Horizon Telescope project was awarded the Breakthrough Prize—known as the Oscars of science—for their effort, and New York’s Museum of Modern Art acquired the image in the form of an inkjet print.
How did they get a picture of a black hole?
The black-hole image that the EHT collaboration unveiled last year made the front pages of newspapers around the world. The researchers constructed the picture by combining radio-frequency signals they had collected from observatories across Earth over two nights in April 2017.
How do we know there is a black hole at the center of our galaxy?
Most stellar black holes, however, are very difficult to detect. Astronomers believe that supermassive black holes lie at the center of virtually all large galaxies, even our own Milky Way. Astronomers can detect them by watching for their effects on nearby stars and gas.
Can the Hubble telescope see black holes?
Hubble also provided astronomers the first-ever views of material encircling black holes in large, flat disks, as well as detailed images of black-hole-powered jets of subatomic particles traveling at nearly the speed of light.
What was the problem with the Hubble Space Telescope?
Butthere was a big problem right off the bat. Hubble had a flawed mirror, researchers learned when the telescope reached orbit and was put to work. The images were fuzzy — close to useless. Hubble’s main mirror had a major defect, a spherical aberration caused by a manufacturing error.
How far away is the Earth from the Hubble Space Telescope?
The Earth is 150 million km from the Sun and the moon orbits the earth at a distance of approximately 384,500 km. The Hubble Space Telescope orbits around the Earth at an altitude of ~570 km above it. Webb will not actually orbit the Earth – instead it will sit at the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrange point, 1.5 million km away!
What is the most famous image taken by the Hubble telescope?
This Hubble picture is widely recognized; it is the view of the so-called Pillars of Creation within the Eagle Nebula. [See a gallery of recent Hubble pictures.] This 1995 Hubble Space Telescope image of the ‘Pillars of Creation’ is probably the most famous astronomical image of the 20th Century.
What is the replacement for the Hubble telescope?
Webb often gets called the replacement for Hubble, but we prefer to call it a successor. Hubble’s science pushed us to look to longer wavelengths to “go beyond” what Hubble has already done. Comparison of the Carina Nebula in visible light (left) and infrared (right), both images by Hubble.