11 Apr 2019

Black hole image a 'Mt Everest for NZ science'

From Morning Report, 7:28 am on 11 April 2019

The first picture ever taken of a black hole has just been revealed. Here's the moment the image was revealed by the project director of Event Horizon Telescope, Sheperd Doeleman.

This image released Wednesday, April 10, 2019, by Event Horizon Telescope shows a black hole. Scientists revealed the first image ever made of a black hole after assembling data gathered by a network of radio telescopes around the world.

Photo: AP/ Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration / Maunakea Observatories

The black hole is 500 million, trillion kilometres away and was photographed by a network of eight telescopes across the world.

Professor of Astronomy Sergei Gulyaev from AUT was up at 1am to watch the live broadcast of the pictures. He joins Guyon Espiner in the studio after a sleepless night.