Dr. Doeleman and his group will develop new software that links currently operating millimeter and sub-millimeter telescope arrays together to form a single 'telescope' operating at 230GHz or 1.3mm. Using Very Long Baseline Interferometry, this set of arrays will be used to observe the Galactic center with 20 micro-arcsecond resolution, corresponding to only one-fifth of the Earth's distance from the Sun. Dr. Doeleman's group will probe the region around the central black hole, which has roughly 4 million times the Sun's mass, to within a few times its Schwarzschild radius. They will measure the rapid motions of orbiting gas, and search for signatures of blobs of material as they are swallowed the black hole. The group will also map in great detail the bright jet of radio-emitting material produced by the black hole, testing theoretical models for its production.
Very Long Baseline Interferometery is a fundamental technique, and the software developed for this problem is potentially transformative, opening up previously impossible observations at extraordinary resolution. The proposal addresses fundamental questions of the physics around black holes, which lies at the intersection of astronomy and physics. Postdoctoral researchers and graduate students will be trained as they participate in both technical and scientific aspects of the research. Undergraduate students in the Haystack Observatory's summer Research Experience for Undergraduates program, and K-12 science teachers in the Research Experience for Teachers program, will also have the opportunity to learn from the project.
