Orbiting interferometers will image black holes for the first time

17 Jun 2002

NASA scientists have designed and tested a new type of X-ray telescope that, when placed in orbit, will capture the first images of a black hole and resolve details of nearby stars as clearly as our own Sun today.

Designed by the University of Colorado and NASA, the telescope has the potential to provide resolution a thousand times as sharp as the finest images available today at any wavelength and a million times as good as current X-ray telescopes.

The design is based on interferometry, which has the power to produce 100 microarcsecond resolution - enough to image a black hole.

Interferometry, where two or more telescopes synthetically build an aperture equal to the separation of the telescopes, is common in radio astronomy and is an emerging technique for optical astronomers. NASA's first orbiting optical interferometer is scheduled for launch in 2006.