An Illustrated History of Black Hole Imaging : Personal Recollections (1972-2002)

Understand

The Event Horizon Telescope Consortium is on the verge to provide the first telescopic image of massive black holes SgrA* and M87* surrounded by accretion disks, at a resolution scale comparable to the size of their event horizons.

• Well before this remarkable achievement made possible by VLBI radio astronomy, many researchers used the computer to reconstruct how a black hole surrounded by luminous material would look from close-up views.
• The images must experience extraordinary optical deformations due to the deflection of light rays produced by the strong curvature of the space-time in the vicinity.
• General relativity allows the calculation of such effects, both on a surrounding accretion disk and on the background star field.