Scientists working with the Event Horizon Telescope made headlines all over the world when they announced that they had obtained the first ever image of a black hole, something long thought to be completely impossible. This incredible feat was accomplished using a global network of dedicated scientists.
As per a recent article on WunderbarTogether.org, German-American cooperation played a key role in the project. The Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, along with the MIT Haystack Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was responsible for combining the petabytes of raw data generated by telescopes using highly specialized computers. This data was then used to generate the groundbreaking image.
Creating an image like this required data from many viewpoints on several continents. Scientists from the United States and Germany played their part in this global effort by operating telescopes at three of these locations. American scientists from the National Science Foundation, The University of Massachusetts, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the University of Chicago, and the University of Arizona all had a hand in operating one of these telescopes, as did their German counterparts at the Max Planck Gesellschaft and the European Southern Observatory.
Read full article on www.WunderbarTogether.org
Photo: Courtesy of Wunderbar Together / Deutschlandjahr USA