Last night, scientists revealed the first-ever image of a black hole at a press conference in Washington, D.C. This is a huge deal, as Harvard & Smithsonian astrophysicist Center for Astrophysics physicist Grant Tremblay told Gizmodo’s Ryan Mandelbaum, “The image marks the start of a new epoch.”
[referenced url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2019/04/this-is-the-first-photo-of-a-black-hole/” thumb=”https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/black-hole-410×231.jpg” title=”This Is The First Photo Of A Black Hole” excerpt=”Abandon all hope, ye who enter here: Scientists have presented the first-ever image of a black hole.”]
But here’s my question for science: Isn’t this image pretty blurry? Researchers spent probably close to a gagillion dollars on the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) system that they used to capture the hole image, and they couldn’t have, like, clicked on the screen before snapping it?
After fiddling around in Lightroom, I was able to enhance the image enough to give us this clearer view of the black hole:
newly discovered black hole (enhanced) pic.twitter.com/9Ao6bzWdzI
— emily lipstein (@emily_lip) April 10, 2019
Truly groundbreaking.
Some other Black Hole Image Specialists were able to uncover different characteristics of the hole that scientists never would have dreamed of uncovering just decades ago.
— Dell Cameron (@dellcam) April 10, 2019
“It’s a momentous day for science and for me personally,” said Gizmodo’s other resident Hole Image Specialist, Dell Cameron, when reached for comment.
Computer, enhance pic.twitter.com/BAXLJRgJDO
— Dom DiFurio (@DomDiFurio) April 10, 2019
Science: It’s amazing. Long live the hole pics, we stan the hole.