Closest Look Ever at the Edge of a Black Hole

This computer simulation shows what a "hot spot" of gas orbiting a black hole would look like in an extremely high-resolution image. The black hole's strong gravity distorts the appearance of nearby glowing gas, casting a silhouette. The green lines are a coordinate grid, also distorted by the black hole's gravity. Here, the black hole is viewed from an angle of 30 degrees above the disk plane. Credit: Avery Broderick (CITA) & Avi Loeb (CfA)
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Closest Look Ever at the Edge of a Black Hole

Sep 03, 2008 | User rating: 4.5 / 5 after 119 vote(s)
(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have taken the closest look ever at the giant black hole in the center of the Milky Way. By combining telescopes in Hawaii, Arizona, and California, they detected structure at a tiny angular scale of 37 micro-arcseconds - the equivalent of a baseball seen on the surface of the moon, 240,000 miles distant. These observations are among the highest resolution ever done in astronomy.
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