Black Holes’ Shadows: In Search For the Black Cat in Dark Space

Black holes are on the top of the list of the most popular space objects. Not only astrophysics are interested in their properties, but general public as well, including school students, amateur astronomers, and other people, curious for everything unexplored. Even though black holes are invisible in the common sense of the word, they manifest themselves by the influence upon their environment. Today scientists dispose of convincing, albeit indirect, evidences in favour of their existence. But in 2019 something really new happened in that field of study — the public was presented with an image of a supermassive black hole. Such image is called a black hole’s shadow and is essentially a direct and the most forceful proof of the existence of that object. The shadow of a black hole is a key to the secret how one can see the invisible. Hereunder we give a notion of a shadow and explain, how and what kind of information about the black hole we can get from these observations.

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