science fiction movies and TV, scientists have
never actually seen one. Even the largest black
holes scientists have located are still very
obscured and distant. At best we can see the
swirling firestorm of super-hot matter falling into the
black hole, but scientists working on the Event
Horizon Telescope think we’ll soon be able to snap
an image of a black hole as soon as 2017.
There are a number of problems the EHT team has
to overcome in order to image a black hole, not least
of which how small they are. The incredible mass of
a black hole is what gives it such strong gravity.
That also means it has extraordinary density.
For example, Sagittarius A* (pronounced Sagittarius
A star) is the supermassive black hole at the center
of the Milky Way. It’s diameter is only 17 times
greater than our sun, but its mass is 4 million times
greater. It’s 25,000 light years away, so trying to spy
it with a regular telescope would be like looking at a
grapefruit on the surface of the moon. The other
issue is all the dust and gas spiraling around a black
hole that obscures the view of the event horizon.