First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. I. The Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole
Date Issued
2019
Author(s)
Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration
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Akiyama, Kazunori
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Alberdi, Antxon
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Alef, Walter
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Asada, Keiichi
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Azulay, Rebecca
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Baczko, Anne-Kathrin
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Ball, David
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Baloković, Mislav
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Barrett, John
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Bintley, Dan
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Blackburn, Lindy
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Boland, Wilfred
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Bouman, Katherine L.
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Bower, Geoffrey C.
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Bremer, Michael
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Brinkerink, Christiaan D.
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Brissenden, Roger
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Britzen, Silke
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Broderick, Avery E.
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Broguiere, Dominique
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Bronzwaer, Thomas
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Byun, Do-Young
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Carlstrom, John E.
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Chael, Andrew
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Chan, Chi-kwan
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Chatterjee, Shami
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Chatterjee, Koushik
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Chen, Ming-Tang
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Chen, Yongjun
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Cho, Ilje
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Christian, Pierre
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Conway, John E.
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Cordes, James M.
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Crew, Geoffrey B.
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Cui, Yuzhu
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Davelaar, Jordy
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De Laurentis, Mariafelicia
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Deane, Roger
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Dempsey, Jessica
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Desvignes, Gregory
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Dexter, Jason
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Doeleman, Sheperd S.
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Eatough, Ralph P.
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Falcke, Heino
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Fish, Vincent L.
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Fomalont, Ed
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Fraga-Encinas, Raquel
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Freeman, William T.
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Friberg, Per
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Fromm, Christian M.
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Gómez, José L.
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Galison, Peter
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Gammie, Charles F.
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García, Roberto
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Gentaz, Olivier
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Georgiev, Boris
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Gold, Roman
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Gu, Minfeng
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Gurwell, Mark
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Hada, Kazuhiro
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Hecht, Michael H.
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Hesper, Ronald
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Ho, Luis C.
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Ho, Paul
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Honma, Mareki
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Huang, Chih-Wei L.
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Huang, Lei
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Hughes, David H.
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Ikeda, Shiro
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Inoue, Makoto
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Issaoun, Sara
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James, David J.
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Jannuzi, Buell T.
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Janssen, Michael
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Jeter, Britton
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Jiang, Wu
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Johnson, Michael D.
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Jorstad, Svetlana
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Jung, Taehyun
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Karami, Mansour
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Karuppusamy, Ramesh
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Kawashima, Tomohisa
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Keating, Garrett K.
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Kettenis, Mark
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Kim, Jae-Young
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Kim, Junhan
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Kim, Jongsoo
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Kino, Motoki
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Koay, Jun Yi
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Koch, Patrick M.
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Koyama, Shoko
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Kramer, Michael
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Kramer, Carsten
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Krichbaum, Thomas P.
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Kuo, Cheng-Yu
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Lauer, Tod R.
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Lee, Sang-Sung
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Li, Yan-Rong
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Li, Zhiyuan
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Lindqvist, Michael
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Liu, Kuo
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Lo, Wen-Ping
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Lobanov, Andrei P.
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Loinard, Laurent
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Lonsdale, Colin
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Lu, Ru-Sen
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MacDonald, Nicholas R.
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Mao, Jirong
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Markoff, Sera
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Marrone, Daniel P.
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Marscher, Alan P.
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Martí-Vidal, Iván
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Matsushita, Satoki
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Matthews, Lynn D.
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Medeiros, Lia
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Menten, Karl M.
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Mizuno, Yosuke
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Mizuno, Izumi
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Moran, James M.
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Moriyama, Kotaro
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Moscibrodzka, Monika
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Müller, Cornelia
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Nagai, Hiroshi
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Nagar, Neil M.
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Nakamura, Masanori
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Narayan, Ramesh
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Narayanan, Gopal
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Natarajan, Iniyan
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Neri, Roberto
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Ni, Chunchong
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Noutsos, Aristeidis
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Okino, Hiroki
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Olivares, Héctor
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Ortiz-León, Gisela N.
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Oyama, Tomoaki
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Özel, Feryal
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Palumbo, Daniel C. M.
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Patel, Nimesh
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Pen, Ue-Li
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Pesce, Dominic W.
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Piétu, Vincent
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Plambeck, Richard
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PopStefanija, Aleksandar
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Porth, Oliver
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Prather, Ben
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Preciado-López, Jorge A.
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Psaltis, Dimitrios
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Pu, Hung-Yi
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Ramakrishnan, Venkatessh
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Rao, Ramprasad
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Rawlings, Mark G.
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Raymond, Alexander W.
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Rezzolla, Luciano
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Ripperda, Bart
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Roelofs, Freek
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Rogers, Alan
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Ros, Eduardo
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Rose, Mel
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Roshanineshat, Arash
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Rottmann, Helge
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Roy, Alan L.
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Ruszczyk, Chet
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Ryan, Benjamin R.
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Sánchez, Salvador
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Sánchez-Arguelles, David
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Sasada, Mahito
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Savolainen, Tuomas
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Schloerb, F. Peter
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Schuster, Karl-Friedrich
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Shao, Lijing
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Shen, Zhiqiang
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Small, Des
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Sohn, Bong Won
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SooHoo, Jason
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Tazaki, Fumie
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Tiede, Paul
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Tilanus, Remo P. J.
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Titus, Michael
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Toma, Kenji
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Torne, Pablo
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Trent, Tyler
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Trippe, Sascha
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Tsuda, Shuichiro
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van Bemmel, Ilse
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van Langevelde, Huib Jan
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van Rossum, Daniel R.
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Wagner, Jan
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Wardle, John
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Weintroub, Jonathan
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Wex, Norbert
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Wharton, Robert
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Wielgus, Maciek
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Wong, George N.
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Wu, Qingwen
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Young, Ken
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Young, André
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Younsi, Ziri
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Yuan, Feng
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Yuan, Ye-Fei
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Zensus, J. Anton
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Zhao, Guangyao
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Zhao, Shan-Shan
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Zhu, Ziyan
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Algaba, Juan-Carlos
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Allardi, Alexander
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Amestica, Rodrigo
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Anczarski, Jadyn
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Bach, Uwe
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Baganoff, Frederick K.
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Beaudoin, Christopher
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Benson, Bradford A.
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Berthold, Ryan
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Blanchard, Jay M.
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Blundell, Ray
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Bustamente, Sandra
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Cappallo, Roger
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Castillo-Domínguez, Edgar
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Chang, Chih-Cheng
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Chang, Shu-Hao
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Chang, Song-Chu
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Chen, Chung-Chen
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Chilson, Ryan
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Chuter, Tim C.
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Córdova Rosado, Rodrigo
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Coulson, Iain M.
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Crawford, Thomas M.
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Crowley, Joseph
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David, John
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Derome, Mark
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Dexter, Matthew
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Dornbusch, Sven
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Dudevoir, Kevin A.
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Dzib, Sergio A.
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Eckart, Andreas
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Eckert, Chris
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Erickson, Neal R.
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Everett, Wendeline B.
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Faber, Aaron
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Farah, Joseph R.
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Fath, Vernon
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Folkers, Thomas W.
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Forbes, David C.
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Freund, Robert
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Gómez-Ruiz, Arturo I.
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Gale, David M.
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Gao, Feng
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Geertsema, Gertie
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Graham, David A.
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Greer, Christopher H.
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Grosslein, Ronald
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Gueth, Frédéric
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Haggard, Daryl
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Halverson, Nils W.
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Han, Chih-Chiang
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Han, Kuo-Chang
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Hao, Jinchi
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Hasegawa, Yutaka
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Henning, Jason W.
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Hernández-Gómez, Antonio
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Herrero-Illana, Rubén
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Heyminck, Stefan
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Hirota, Akihiko
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Hoge, James
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Huang, Yau-De
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Impellizzeri, C. M. Violette
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Jiang, Homin
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Kamble, Atish
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Keisler, Ryan
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Kimura, Kimihiro
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Kono, Yusuke
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Kubo, Derek
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Kuroda, John
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Lacasse, Richard
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Laing, Robert A.
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Leitch, Erik M.
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Li, Chao-Te
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Lin, Lupin C. -C.
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Liu, Ching-Tang
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Liu, Kuan-Yu
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Lu, Li-Ming
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Marson, Ralph G.
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Martin-Cocher, Pierre L.
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Massingill, Kyle D.
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Matulonis, Callie
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McColl, Martin P.
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McWhirter, Stephen R.
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Messias, Hugo
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Meyer-Zhao, Zheng
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Michalik, Daniel
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Montaña, Alfredo
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Montgomerie, William
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Mora-Klein, Matias
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Muders, Dirk
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Nadolski, Andrew
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Navarro, Santiago
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Neilsen, Joseph
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Nguyen, Chi H.
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Nishioka, Hiroaki
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Norton, Timothy
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Nowak, Michael A.
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Nystrom, George
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Ogawa, Hideo
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Oshiro, Peter
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Parsons, Harriet
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Paine, Scott N.
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Peñalver, Juan
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Phillips, Neil M.
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Poirier, Michael
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Pradel, Nicolas
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Primiani, Rurik A.
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Raffin, Philippe A.
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Rahlin, Alexandra S.
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Reiland, George
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Risacher, Christopher
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Ruiz, Ignacio
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Sáez-Madaín, Alejandro F.
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Sassella, Remi
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Schellart, Pim
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Shaw, Paul
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Silva, Kevin M.
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Shiokawa, Hotaka
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Smith, David R.
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Snow, William
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Souccar, Kamal
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Sousa, Don
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Sridharan, T. K.
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Srinivasan, Ranjani
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Stahm, William
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Stark, Anthony A.
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Story, Kyle
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Timmer, Sjoerd T.
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Vertatschitsch, Laura
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Walther, Craig
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Wei, Ta-Shun
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Whitehorn, Nathan
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Whitney, Alan R.
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Woody, David P.
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Wouterloot, Jan G. A.
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Wright, Melvin
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Yamaguchi, Paul
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Yu, Chen-Yu
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Zeballos, Milagros
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Zhang, Shuo
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Ziurys, Lucy
Abstract
When surrounded by a transparent emission region, black holes are expected to reveal a dark shadow caused by gravitational light bending and photon capture at the event horizon. To image and study this phenomenon, we have assembled the Event Horizon Telescope, a global very long baseline interferometry array observing at a wavelength of 1.3 mm. This allows us to reconstruct event-horizon-scale images of the supermassive black hole candidate in the center of the giant elliptical galaxy M87. We have resolved the central compact radio source as an asymmetric bright emission ring with a diameter of 42 ± 3 μas, which is circular and encompasses a central depression in brightness with a flux ratio ≳10:1. The emission ring is recovered using different calibration and imaging schemes, with its diameter and width remaining stable over four different observations carried out in different days. Overall, the observed image is consistent with expectations for the shadow of a Kerr black hole as predicted by general relativity. The asymmetry in brightness in the ring can be explained in terms of relativistic beaming of the emission from a plasma rotating close to the speed of light around a black hole. We compare our images to an extensive library of ray-traced general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of black holes and derive a central mass of M = (6.5 ± 0.7) × 109 M ☉. Our radio-wave observations thus provide powerful evidence for the presence of supermassive black holes in centers of galaxies and as the central engines of active galactic nuclei. They also present a new tool to explore gravity in its most extreme limit and on a mass scale that was so far not accessible.
Volume
875
Issue
1
Start page
L1
Issn Identifier
2041-8205
Ads BibCode
2019ApJ...875L...1E
Rights
open.access
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