Related papers: Seeing Black Holes : from the Computer to the Tele…
The Event Horizon Telescope is a millimeter VLBI array that aims to take the first pictures of the black holes in the center of the Milky Way and of the M87 galaxy, with horizon scale resolution. Measurements of the shape and size of the…
This review discusses the current status of supermassive black hole research, as seen from a purely observational standpoint. Since the early '90s, rapid technological advances, most notably the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, the…
This paper presents an interdisciplinary effort aiming to develop and share sustainable knowledge necessary to analyze, understand, and use published scientific results to advance reproducibility in multi-messenger astrophysics.…
When surrounded by a transparent emission region, black holes are expected to reveal a dark shadow caused by gravitational light bending and photon capture at the event horizon. To image and study this phenomenon, we have assembled the…
Recent developments have ushered in a new era in the field of black hole astrophysics, providing our first direct view of the remarkable environment near black hole event horizons. These observations have enabled astronomers to confirm…
I discuss some aspects of the use of computers in Relativity, Astrophysics and Cosmology. For each section I provide two examples representative of the field, including gravitational collapse, black hole imagery, supernovae explosions,…
In the next 30 years, a new generation of space and ground-based telescopes will permit to obtain multi-frequency observations of faint sources and, for the first time in human history, to achieve a deep, almost synoptical monitoring of the…
In recent years, the evidence for the existence of an ultra-compact concentration of dark mass associated with the radio source Sgr A* in the Galactic Center has become very strong. However, an unambiguous proof that this object is indeed a…
General Relativity predicts that the emission close to a black hole must be lensed by its strong gravitational field, illuminating the last photon orbit. This results in a dark circular area known as the black hole 'shadow'. The Event…
We use the Sloan-Digital Sky Survey quasar catalog to statistically infer the local abundance of black holes heavier than $10^8M_\odot$, which allows us to estimate the detection prospect of super-massive black holes by future observational…
The first images of the black holes in Sagittarius A* and M87* have created a wide range of new scientific opportunities in gravitational physics, compact objects, and relativistic astrophysics. We discuss here the scientific opportunities…
The Event Horizon Telescope has produced resolved images of the supermassive black holes Sgr A* and M87*, which present the largest shadows on the sky. In the next decade, technological improvements and extensions to the array will enable…
We investigate constraints on the distribution of dark matter in the neighbourhood of the Galactic centre that may eventually be attained with the high-resolution Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). The shadow of a black hole in vacuum is used…
This is a pedagogical review of recent results on the interactions of central massive black holes with stars very near them, focused on the black hole in the center of the Milky Way. Table of contents: [1] Introduction [2] Stellar dynamics…
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a global very long baseline interferometry array operating at millimetre wavelengths, is spatially resolving the immediate environments of black holes for the first time. The current observations of the…
Supermassive black holes have generally been recognized as the most destructive force in nature. But in recent years, they have undergone a dramatic shift in paradigm. These objects may have been critical to the formation of structure in…
The presence of dark matter in the Universe is nowadays widely supported by a large body of astronomical and cosmological observations. The central region of the Milky Way is expected to harbor a large amount of dark matter.…
While until recently they were often considered as exotic objects of dubious existence, in the last decades there have been overwhelming observational evidences for the presence of stellar mass black holes in binary systems, supermassive…
Black holes are a common feature of the Universe. They are observed as stellar mass black holes spread throughout galaxies and as supermassive objects in their centres. Observations of stars orbiting close to the centre of our Galaxy…
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has directly resolved and imaged two supermassive black holes and opening a new window on black hole physics. However, the current array is limited to only these two brightest nearby targets. This white…