First results from the Event Horizon Telescope

Maciek Wielgus (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)

Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a global very long baseline interferometry array, capable of performing observations in 1 millimeter wavelength. After over a decade of tests and technical developments, in April 2017 EHT has performed first observations as a mature instrument, with sensitivity, resolution and coverage unparalleled in the history of the millimeter wavelength radioastronomy, for the first time expected to allow for the imaging of the observed sources. Observations of black hole candidates in the centers of Milky Way and M87 were conducted with a nominal resolution better than the diameter of a ’shadow of a black hole’ expected from general relativity. The data set was processed and analyzed since then, leading to the announcement of the results in the April of 2019. I will talk about these first results.