University of Pennsylvania Astrophysics Special Seminar

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is an international collaboration to observe black holes at horizon-scale resolution. The EHT uses the technique of very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) and submillimeter telescopes all over the globe to perform VLBI experiments at 1mm wavelength, where we expect to resolve the event horizons of two targets, M87* and SgrA*. In 2017, the EHT performed its first experiment, using eight observatories at six geographic locations. In this talk I will report on the first results from that experiment, the image of the nuclear black hole in M87. From these data we have improved our understanding of this source, measured its mass, and provided a new test of General Relativity. I will also describe the path to these results and the next steps for this project.