What Does a Black Hole Look Like: How We Got our First Picture

On Wednesday, January 22, 2020 at 7 pm, Dr. Eliot Quataert, of the University of California, Berkeley, will give a free, illustrated, non-technical talk on:

”What Does a Black Hole Look Like: How We Got our First Picture”
in the Smithwick Theater at Foothill College, in Los Altos.

The talk is part of the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series at Foothill College, now in its 20th year.

Black holes are one of the most remarkable predictions of Einstein's theory of gravity: so much material is compressed into such a small volume that nothing, not even light, can escape.  Black holes have also captured the public imagination, and are commonly featured in popular culture, from Star Trek to Hollywood movies.  In Spring 2019, the world-wide Event Horizon Telescope released the first real (non-Hollywood!) picture of gas around a black hole and the “shadow” it makes as the gas swirls into the black hole.  Dr. Quataert will describe how these observations were made and what they have taught us about black holes.

Eliot Quataert is a Professor of Astronomy and Physics at UC Berkeley and the Director of the Theoretical Astrophysics Center.  He is an astrophysics theorist who works on a wide range of problems, from stars and black holes to how galaxies form.  He has received a number of national awards for his research and is also a highly regarded teacher and public lecturer.  

Foothill College is just off the El Monte Road exit from Freeway 280 in Los Altos. 

For directions and parking information, see: foothill.edu/parking.  

For a campus map, see: foothill.edu/map.

The lecture is co-sponsored by:

• The Foothill College Physical Science Division
• The SETI Institute
• The Astronomical Society of the Pacific
• NASA’s Ames Research Center

We get large crowds for these talks, so we ask people to try to arrive a little bit early to find parking.  The lecture and parking in Lot #1 at the college are both free.

Past lectures in the series can be found on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/SVAstronomyLectures

For more information, visit https://foothill.edu/events/?sr=2&rec_id=6611