Imaging the supermassive black hole in M87 with the Event Horizon Telescope

Speaker: Dr. Dom Pesce (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)

Title: Imaging the supermassive black hole in M87 with the Event Horizon Telescope

Abstract: The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a global very long baseline interferometry array observing at a wavelength of 1.3 mm and designed to resolve the event-horizon-scale emission expected from the nearest supermassive black holes.  To date, the EHT has produced total intensity and, most recently, polarimetric images of the black hole at the heart of the M87 galaxy, revealing a compact and asymmetric ring of emission.  The observed emission is consistent with expectations that it originates from synchrotron radiation produced in a magnetized relativistic plasma surrounding the black hole.  In this talk I will discuss the telescope, data calibration, and downstream analyses that made these images possible, and I will describe their implications for our understanding of supermassive black holes.

About the speaker: Dom Pesce is an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics / Harvard & Smithsonian.  Dom received his PhD in 2018 from the University of Virginia under the supervision of Jim Braatz, where he also worked as a Reber Fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville.  He then undertook a postdoc at the CfA with Shep Doeleman as part of the Event Horizon Telescope group.  Dom's research currently focuses on studying supermassive black holes using very long baseline interferometry, statistical inference and modeling, and preparing for the next-generation Event Horizon Telescope.

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Meeting ID: 995 291 7599
Passcode: PHAS

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