2019-04-10 black hole

katie-bouman

See also

• https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ab0e85

• http://m.leparisien.fr/societe/qui-est-katie-bouman-l-ingenieure-derriere-la-celebre-photo-du-trou-noir-11-04-2019-8051151.php

« Je suis en train d’observer - sans y croire - la reconstitution en direct de la toute première image d’un trou noir », détaille la légende de sa photo.

Sur l’écran de son ordinateur, entre plusieurs fenêtres montrant plusieurs lignes de code, on aperçoit les fragments de cette image partagée des milliers de fois mercredi : celle d’un anneau orangé sur un fond noir, cliché conçu après des années de travail combinant astrophysique, mathématiques, ingénierie et informatique.

Free Software and Python

See also

• https://www.tfir.io/gnu-gplv3-at-the-heart-of-black-hole-image/

• https://github.com/achael/eht-imaging/blob/master/LICENSE.txt

Now, something for the Free and Open Source fans. The image was created using software defined telescopes that virtually networked physical telescopes installed in different parts of the world to create a telescope as big as Earth.

Free and Open Source software was at the heart of this image.

The team used three different imaging software libraries to achieve the feat. Out of the three, two were fully open source libraries, Sparselab and ehtim.

Sparselab is a Python Library for Interferometric Imaging using Sparse Modeling. ehtim is a Python module for simulating and manipulating VLBI data and producing images with regularized maximum likelihood methods.

Richard M Stallman, the founder of the GNU Project will be glad to see that the source code for both libraries is released under GNU GPL v3.

Yes, you read it right – GNU GPL v3.