We have the first image, what is happening now?

Astronomers agree that their work is far from complete, project director Sheperd Doeleman of Harvard University said on Wednesday. In fact, it's just beginning.

Scientists unveiled this week the first image of a black hole located in the center of Messier 87, a gigantic galaxy located in the "neighboring" group of the galaxy of the Virgin. It looked like a flamboyant orange, yellow and black ring.

The images come from a collection of eight telescopes around the world, specially designed to observe black holes, as part of the Event Horizon Telescope project. The telescopes are in Chile, Hawaii, Arizona, Mexico, Spain and the South Pole.

Although the image is a monumental achievement, Doeleman said the images could still be made sharper. And that could be done by adding more telescopes.

"We are launching into a wonderful new series of new telescopes (at places around) of the Earth, so if you add other telescopes, you are building this virtual mirror," he said. "Even adding two or three additional stations to the appropriate places will greatly increase image fidelity."

In addition, the now famous image unveiled Wednesday was that of a black hole located in a galaxy far removed. But astronomers have also taken pictures of the supermassive black hole (Sagittarius A) which is at the heart of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. The photos of this "neighbor" black hole have not yet been fully processed and have not yet been made public.

"We are very excited to be working on the star of Sagittarius," Doeleman said. "We promise nothing", but they hope to publish the photos very soon.

TO CLOSE

The European Southern Observatory has released the very first insight into Sagittarius A, the collapsed star at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way.
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Other news: The photos we saw this week were taken two years ago, in April 2017. Since then, astronomers have also conducted a more recent photo shoot of the two black holes in 2018, which included an additional terrestrial telescope for even greater resolution.

In April 2017, "we had eight telescopes in six locations and in 2018 we added another telescope (in Greenland), which significantly increased our coverage."

So we also have the images taken in 2018 to hope to see.

And in regards to future black hole photos: the team will soon be incorporating another dish into their search for black hole photos – one at the top of Kitt Peak in southern Arizona.

An even more fantastic dream would be to add another "off-planet" telescope.

"Global domination is not enough for us, we also want to go into space," said Doeleman, adding that if a space radio telescope could be placed in orbit around the Earth, it would only increase our chances to take pictures of high quality black hole images.

In addition, beyond the improvements made to telescopes, scientists will also focus on observing and understanding the powerful jets of radiation and high-speed particles ejected by black holes near the speed of light, according to Axios.

Will Markoff, theoretical physicist at the University of Amsterdam, told Axios that even with this new discovery, scientists are still limited in their understanding of black holes.

"I'm very interested in this interface with theoretical physics, and what are really black holes?", She asked. "We know that Einstein was right in the general sense of the word, but we do not really understand why gravity works the same way on a really microscopic level." How does it work? not a force like the others … the general explains relatively how it works, but it does not answer the why, "said Markoff.

Beyond the Horizon Telescope Event Team, other project teams are also looking at black holes, Space.com said.

These include NASA's Spectroscopic Nuclear Spectroscopy Spacecraft, which searches for supermassive black holes around the universe.

Space.com also said that the Cal Tech laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory detected spatio-temporal ripples generated by fusions involving relatively small black holes.

And future projects – such as the Space Interferometer Space Antenna mission of the European Space Agency – will also look for new black holes in the coming decades.

"The subject of black holes is (ready) for prime time," said Harvard's Avi Loeb at Space.com.

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