Shaw-IAU Workshops by the OAE

Supermassive black holes lurking in the centers of galaxies generate the highest energy processes in the known Universe, ejecting jets of plasma that affect galaxy environments on large scales. These objects seem to have a strong connection with their host galaxies, but remain shrouded in mystery: where do these black holes come from, why are they at centers of galaxies, how do they accrete matter and form these jets? Understanding fundamental properties of black holes, how they feed and eject matter, requires a view of these objects at their very edge. In this talk, I will be giving an overview of the Event Horizon Telescope project: an ambitious global experiment pushing the boundaries of technological developments to finally capture the darkness at the heart of galaxies. The EHT has now obtained the first images of the shadow a supermassive black hole casts on a disk of glowing infalling material, in the giant elliptical galaxy of M87 and at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy. These images are consistent with Einstein‘s predictions from over a hundred years ago, and teach us about how gravity and matter interact in the extreme environment that is the edge of a black hole.

About Sara Issaoun

Sara Issaoun is an observational radio-astronomer and a Submillimeter Array Fellow at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. She is a member of the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration and the Science Operations Lead for the Black Hole Explorer.