Astronomy on Tap Champaign-Urbana: Portrait of a Black Hole

Join us at 7:30pm Thursday, 8/18 for this month’s Astronomy on Tap at  in Urbana! University of Illinois professor Charles Gammie will be painting us a verbal Portrait of a Black Hole:

The center of our Milky Way galaxy contains a black hole that is millions of times as massive as the sun. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) recently made an image of this black hole using radio antennas at sites distributed around the globe, including at the South Pole, in the Atacama desert of northern Chile, and on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The image is ring-shaped, just like EHT’s earlier image of a black hole outside the Milky Way. Professor Gammie will talk about how the image was made, why it looks the way it does, and what it means for our understanding of the center of our galaxy.

Charles Gammie is a Professor of Astronomy and Physics at the University of Illinois with broad interests in theoretical astrophysics, including black holes and the formationof the Moon.

Grab a drink, bring your friends and family, and let’s have some fun while we learn! We hope to see you there!

Poster design by local artist Cailyn Talamonti https://www.cailyntalamonti.com/

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