Imaging an Event Horizon: submm-VLBI of a Super Massive Black Hole

Understand

A long standing goal in astrophysics is to directly observe the immediate environment of a black hole with angular resolution comparable to the event horizon.

• Realizing this goal would open a new window on the study of General Relativity in the strong field regime, accretion and outflow processes at the edge of a black hole, the existence of an event horizon, and fundamental black hole physics (e.g., spin).
• Steady long-term progress on improving the capability of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) at short wavelengths has now made it extremely likely that this goal will be achieved within the next decade.
• The most compelling evidence for this is the recent observation by 1.3mm VLBI of Schwarzschild radius scale structure in SgrA*, the compact source of radio, submm, NIR and xrays at the center of the Milky Way.