Related papers: The Black Hole Explorer: Operating a Hybrid Observ…
The Black Hole Explorer (BHEX), an orbiting, multi-band, millimeter radio-telescope, in hybrid combination with millimeter terrestrial radio-telescopes, is designed to discover and measure the thin photon ring around the supermassive black…
The Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) is a space very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) mission concept that is currently under development. BHEX will study supermassive black holes at unprecedented resolution, isolating the signature of the…
We present the Black Hole Explorer (BHEX), a mission that will produce the sharpest images in the history of astronomy by extending submillimeter Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) to space. BHEX will discover and measure the bright…
We present the basic design of a large, light weight, spaceborne antenna for the Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) space Very Long Baseline Interferometry (space-VLBI) mission, achieving high efficiency operation at mm/sub-mm wavelengths. An…
General relativity predicts that black hole images ought to display a bright, thin (and as-of-yet-unresolved) ring. This "photon ring" is produced by photons that explore the strong gravity of the black hole, flowing along trajectories that…
The Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) is a next-generation space very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) mission concept that will extend the ground-based millimeter/submillimeter arrays into space. The mission, closely aligned with the science…
The $n=1$ photon ring is a full image of the astrophysical source around a black hole, produced by photons that execute $n\approx1$ half-orbit around the event horizon on their way to an observer. The Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) is a…
The Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) mission extends the submillimeter Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) to space. The preliminary baseline design of a shaped axial-symmetric displaced-axis dual-reflector antenna for the BHEX is presented.…
The Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) is a proposed mission to launch a sub-millimeter radio telescope into Earth orbit that will take the sharpest images in the history of astronomy and reveal novel horizon-scale features of supermassive black…
The Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) will be the first sub-mm wavelength Space Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) mission. It targets astronomical imaging with the highest ever spatial resolution to enable detection of the photon ring of a…
Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) is a space VLBI mission concept, which can probe the black hole spacetime and the plasma properties including the magnetic fields of the accretion flows and relativistic jets. We propose science cases anticipated…
Direct electromagnetic observation of the orbital motion of a sub-parsec, supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB) would provide the first conclusive proof of such systems existing. Widely considered to be the sources of gravitational waves,…
The Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) is a mission concept that can dramatically improve state-of-the-art astronomical very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) imaging resolution by extending baseline distances to space. To support these…
A dual band receiver has been designed for the Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) mission, which is a space Very-Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) mission concept, aimed at unveiling the photon ring of black holes. The cryogenic receiver…
In this effort, we demonstrate the performance of a highly stable time reference for the proposed Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) mission, a space-based extension to the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI)…
General relativity predicts that images of optically thin accretion flows around black holes should generically have a ``photon ring,'' composed of a series of increasingly sharp subrings that correspond to increasingly strongly lensed…
(abridged) The black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) is a prime target for next-generation Earth-space very-long-baseline interferometry missions such as the Black Hole Explorer (BHEX), which aims to probe baselines of the order of 20…
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) captured the first images of a black hole using Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). In the near future, extensions of the EHT such as the Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) will allow access to finer-scale…
The $n=1$ photon ring is an important probe of black hole (BH) properties and will be resolved by the Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) for the first time. However, extraction of black hole parameters from observations of the $n=1$ subring is not…
Horizon-scale imaging with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has provided transformative insights into supermassive black holes but its resolution and scope are limited by ground-based constraints such as the size of the Earth, its…