Distinguished Seminar in Computational Science and Engineering
November 17, 2022, 12 PM
Capturing the First Portrait of Our Milky Way’s Black Hole & Beyond
Katie Bouman
Assistant Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences
California Institute of Technology
Abstract:
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a unique computational camera with a goal of imaging the imprint of a black hole on a backdrop of glowing gas. In May of 2022 the EHT collaboration revealed the first images of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy: Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). This image was computationally reconstructed from sparse and noisy measurements collected from synchronized telescopes around the globe. Imaging Sgr A* proved especially challenging due to its evolution, which is dynamic on the timescale of acquisition. In this talk I will summarize how the first black hole images were recovered from the EHT data and highlight the challenges that had to be addressed in order to capture an image of Sgr A*, including newly developed methods we used to characterize the uncertainty. Although we have learned a lot from these images already, remaining scientific questions motivate us to improve this computational telescope to see black hole phenomena still invisible to us. This talk will also highlight future directions and how we are developing physics-informed machine learning methods that will allow us to extract the evolving structure of our own Milky Way’s black hole over the course of a night in the future, perhaps even in three dimensions.
Bio:
Katherine L. (Katie) Bouman is an assistant professor in the Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Electrical Engineering, and Astronomy Departments at the California Institute of Technology. Before joining Caltech, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. She received her Ph.D. in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT in EECS, and her bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan. She is a Rosenberg Scholar, Heritage Medical Research Institute Investigator, recipient of the Royal Photographic Society Progress Medal, and co-recipient of the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. As part of the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, she is co-lead of the Imaging Working Group and acted as coordinator for papers concerning the first imaging of the M87* and Sagittarius A* black holes.
Capturing the First Portrait of Our Milky Way's Black Hole & Beyond
Katie Bouman
California Institute of Technology