BBC4 21.00 today- Black hole: the Universe's greatest mystery

[Roy]

After images of a Black Hole on the BBC news today not sure if a bit out of date! Will watch anyway : )
How to see a Black Hole: The Universe's Greatest Mystery can be seen the UK at 21:00 on BBC Four on Wednesday 10 April.

Cheers, Sue.

[MarkS]

I've just watched it on iPlayer.  It's well worth seeing to understand the complexities involved in producing that Black Hole image.

I loved the sign on one of the racks of harddrives telling people to handle them with care: "Harddrives are more sensitive than eggs"!

All the data had to be recorded with an accurate time signal and physically sent back to be processed by the "Correlator".  Movements in the Antartica ice sheet, plate tectonics and the moon's gravitational influence on the earth's surface each affect the precise position of each radio telescope and had to be taken into account.  Incredible stuff!

Essentially they were combining 8 radio telescope locations to create a virtual radio telescope having the diameter of the earth.

Mark

[JohnP]

Very interesting documentary & defo worth a watch if you've not seen it.. amazed me that they didn't take backup's before shipping data around the world. My daughter is currently in final year at Bath & I'm screaming at her weekly to make sure she takes multiple backup's in case of laptop failure... Data is soooooo... precious!

[MarkS]

If you can take a bit of maths then here is Katie Bouman herself describing how the computational imaging worked:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGL_OL3OrCE

Mark

[MarkS]

Very interesting documentary & defo worth a watch if you've not seen it.. amazed me that they didn't take backup's before shipping data around the world. My daughter is currently in final year at Bath & I'm screaming at her weekly to make sure she takes multiple backup's in case of laptop failure... Data is soooooo... precious!

When you are buying helium HDDs by the half-ton, I guess the budget doesn't stretch to a ton.

Mark