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  Speculation on the first photo of Sgr A*Feb 22, 2013 1:06 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:I came across an interesting and topical article sorta recently called "What Will First Photos of Black Holes Look Like?" But it isn't speculating about the look of just any black holes--it's talking about what the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*, the giant black hole at the center of our galaxy, may look like once someone actually gets the capability of taking a picture of it; the Event Horizon Telescope, for instance, is aiming to do just that with a massive coordination of radio telescopes across the world. Nobody has the resolving power to pull together an image of A* yet, but initial data collected by the Event Horizon Telescope project fits the theory that A*, or the area immediately surrounding it, anyway, will look like a crescent: that would be the superheated gas in the accretion disc getting sucked into the hole; the prediction is that the disc will appear lopsided due to the Doppler effect: the disc may be rotating so rapidly that the side rotating toward us appears brighter, while the side rotating away from us fades from view. And it could have a crescent shape because the event horizon of the black hole in the middle carves out a hole there. The article has a simulated view of what this might look like; maybe we'll actually get to see an image of the real thing some day!
 
 
 
 
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