The Elusive Black Hole: The First Image
In The Elusive Black Hole: The First Image, narrator Kate Yule describes the impossibility of photographing a black hole because the gravitational pull of black holes can consume entire stars. Learn how Dan Marrone from the University of Arizona attempts to capture photographic evidence of the moment when this takes place using a radio telescope. This video is excerpted from BBC’s Einstein & Hawking: Masters of Our Universe, a mind-bending documentary that tells the story of how the two most famous scientists of the 20th Century transformed our understanding of the Universe and changed the world.
Lesson Express
Q: What intrigues Dan Marrone about black holes, and what is he trying to capture?
A: Black holes are elusive; we are confident they are there but we don’t have pictures of them, so Dan is trying to capture the moment a black hole consumes a star.
Q: What does the motion of the stars in our galaxy suggest?
A: Their motion suggests that they are orbiting something huge that we can’t see. Scientists have named what is presumably a black hole there Sagittarius A.
Q: How are scientists studying Sagittarius A?
A: There is an entire network of telescopes around the world working together.