Ideas worth spreading

How to take a picture of a black hole

5,801,339 views |

Katie Bouman |

TEDxBeaconStreet

• November 2016

At the heart of the Milky Way, there's a supermassive black hole that feeds off a spinning disk of hot gas, sucking up anything that ventures too close -- even light. We can't see it, but its event horizon casts a shadow, and an image of that shadow could help answer some important questions about the universe. Scientists used to think that making such an image would require a telescope the size of Earth -- until Katie Bouman and a team of astronomers came up with a clever alternative. Bouman explains how we can take a picture of the ultimate dark using the Event Horizon Telescope.

At the heart of the Milky Way, there's a supermassive black hole that feeds off a spinning disk of hot gas, sucking up anything that ventures too close -- even light. We can't see it, but its event horizon casts a shadow, and an image of that shadow could help answer some important questions about the universe. Scientists used to think that making such an image would require a telescope the size of Earth -- until Katie Bouman and a team of astronomers came up with a clever alternative. Bouman explains how we can take a picture of the ultimate dark using the Event Horizon Telescope.

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About the speaker

Katie Bouman

Imaging scientist

See speaker profile

Katie Bouman is part of an international team of astronomers that's creating the world's largest telescope to take the very first picture of a black hole.

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"Computational Imaging for VLBI Image Reconstruction"

To learn a little bit more about Katie’s imaging algorithm, check out this short talk!

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"Photographing our Galaxy's Black Hole"

Here astrophysicist Michael Johnson talks more in depth about what measurements the Event Horizon Telescope makes and how we can make a picture from them. He also has some really nice analogies to help explain it.

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This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxBeaconStreet, an independent event. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Read more about TEDx.