The world saw the first image of the black hole on April 10, 2019, which was captured by eight linked telescope called Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) around the world located in Hawaii, Chile, Mexico, Spain, Arizona, and Antarctica.
Due to the contribution of 29-Year-Old Katie Bouman from Harvard University background in computer science and electrical engineering. Years of data collected are put together to create the black hole image. Images collected by EHT gathered in a single supercomputer and took around 2 years by 200 scientists to compile the final image.
She designed the algorithm from the past three years and dozens of EHT team to compile and test the image. But it wasn’t until June last year when all the telescope data finally arrived.
“No one algorithm or person made this image, it required the amazing talent of a team of scientists from around the globe and years of hard work to develop the instrument, data processing, imaging methods, and analysis techniques that were necessary to pull off this seemingly impossible feat,” said Bouman.
The image of Katie shared by MIT in twitter posing with 5 Petabytes of data (1 petabyte = 1000 terabytes & 1 terabyte = 1000 gigabytes) went viral online. Katie shares in Facebook that,” Watching in disbelief as the first image I ever made of a black hole was in the process of being reconstructed.” She also said in an interview, maybe one day, we might even get videos of black holes instead of just images.
Bouman worked with a team of three other researchers to develop the algorithms that made the full black hole image possible. She joined the EHT team 6 years ago and now she will be joining her new job as an assistant professor at California Institute of Technology while the contribution to EHT will continue.
Her TED Talks in two years back she said that “first photos will come in the next two years.” Her prediction was spot on.