"Voltron Fleet" of Telescopes Zooming in on Mystery of the Galactic Core

Scientists are setting up a super-telescope-network to study Sagittarius A*, the alias for the suspected massive black hole at the center of our galaxy crammed into an area the size of the inner solar system. It's eight terra-yotta-kilograms , aka "so vast we don't even have prefixes that high", four million solar masses.  So why is it so hard to see?  Well, it's buried behind half a galaxy's worth of light-emitting stars, interstellar dust over thirty thousand light years kind of reduces the signal, and - minor issue - black holes eat light.  Which makes things trickier.

Luckily astronomer Shep Doeleman who is leading a team at MIT's Haystack Observatory remembers Voltron, and realized that if one telescope isn't enough, you just plug more of them together until it works.  The technique is called Very Long Baseline Interferometry, VLBI, and it effectively creates a vast virtual dish as big as the distance between the telescopes - and he's using telescopes all over the planet.

The second part of his strategy is tuning the telescopes to 1 mm radiation, which is not as strongly absorbed by the half-a-galaxy's worth of junk between us and the action.  And what action it is - if we can observe Sagittarius A*'s surroundings we can confirm once and for all whether it's a black hole - and prove Einstein right (or wrong!) . Relativity theory predicts the existence of black holes. If relativity breaks down, Doeleman and his team might not see a black hole at all, but something totally weird.

Relativity describes how large masses can bend space, and a black hole is where the mass is so large that space gives up altogether and becomes a singularity.  Black holes are already well understood, we think, but we've only ever observed them at second hand - the behavior of orbiting objects or bent light rays.  To actually view the shadow of a black hole, the cut-off point where light is swallowed and cannot escape, would be a massive advance - and only the beginning.

Detailed observation of the area around the Sag A* border would be a goldmine of information. The spin and rate of matter inflow into the central black hole will tell us about the Milky Way's creation, as well as providing further extreme tests of general relativity.  We could even see frame dragging, which sounds like a video game hardware issue but is actually something that could happen to reality - where a spinning black hole grabs hold of space and literally pulls reality around after it.

The rock star at center of Earth's microwave eye will be in the high deserts of Chile, where the Atacama 66-dish Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) is being built, which should be up and running by 2012. In concert with other scopes across the planet. ALMA will should provide a much clearer picture of Sag A*

ALMA is a giant, international observatory composed initially of 66 high-precision telescopes, operating at wavelengths of 0.3 to 9.6 mm. The ALMA antennas will be electronically combined and provide astronomical observations which are equivalent to a single large telescope of tremendous size and resolution, able to probe the Universe at millimeter and sub-millimeter wavelengths with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution, with an accuracy up to ten times better than the Hubble Space Telescope.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

Black Holes Key to Mapping the Evolution of the Universe

Luckily astronomer Shep Doeleman who is leading a team at MIT's Haystack Observatory remembers Voltron, and realized that if one telescope isn't enough, you just plug more of them together until it works.  The technique is called Very Long Baseline Interferometry, VLBI, and it effectively creates a vast virtual dish as big as the distance between the telescopes - and he's using telescopes all over the planet.

The second part of his strategy is tuning the telescopes to 1 mm radiation, which is not as strongly absorbed by the half-a-galaxy's worth of junk between us and the action.  And what action it is - if we can observe Sagittarius A*'s surroundings we can confirm once and for all whether it's a black hole - and prove Einstein right (or wrong!) . Relativity theory predicts the existence of black holes. If relativity breaks down, Doeleman and his team might not see a black hole at all, but something totally weird.

Relativity describes how large masses can bend space, and a black hole is where the mass is so large that space gives up altogether and becomes a singularity.  Black holes are already well understood, we think, but we've only ever observed them at second hand - the behavior of orbiting objects or bent light rays.  To actually view the shadow of a black hole, the cut-off point where light is swallowed and cannot escape, would be a massive advance - and only the beginning.

Detailed observation of the area around the Sag A* border would be a goldmine of information. The spin and rate of matter inflow into the central black hole will tell us about the Milky Way's creation, as well as providing further extreme tests of general relativity.  We could even see frame dragging, which sounds like a video game hardware issue but is actually something that could happen to reality - where a spinning black hole grabs hold of space and literally pulls reality around after it.

The rock star at center of Earth's microwave eye will be in the high deserts of Chile, where the Atacama 66-dish Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) is being built, which should be up and running by 2012. In concert with other scopes across the planet. ALMA will should provide a much clearer picture of Sag A*

ALMA is a giant, international observatory composed initially of 66 high-precision telescopes, operating at wavelengths of 0.3 to 9.6 mm. The ALMA antennas will be electronically combined and provide astronomical observations which are equivalent to a single large telescope of tremendous size and resolution, able to probe the Universe at millimeter and sub-millimeter wavelengths with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution, with an accuracy up to ten times better than the Hubble Space Telescope.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

Black Holes Key to Mapping the Evolution of the Universe

Comments

[John P. Cater]

So interesting that in 2012 we may finally see into Hanab Ku. Is that just a coincidence?

[kenneth]

there are no coincidences

[aajkal]

The technique is called Very Long Baseline Interferometry, VLBI, and it effectively creates a vast virtual dish as big as the distance between the telescopes - and he's using telescopes all over the planet.