2019 Review & M87 Black Hole Image

In this 2019 review, we’ll see a comet from another solar system passing through ours. We’ll take a close look at the Southern Crab Nebula. We’ll identify Blue Straggler stars in a giant globular cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud. We’ll cover a unique Milky Way image created by the Pan-Starr Sky Survey. And we’ll examine the space between two colliding galaxies. This past year, Hubble accidentally discovered a new relatively nearby galaxy. We’ll take a look. We’ll see a galaxy that’s losing all of its gas. And we’ll see a rare Ring galaxy and cover how rings like it are created.  We’ll also cover one of the most powerful Gamma Ray Burst ever detected. And we’ll see a distant galaxy that appears as an arc in a closer giant galaxy cluster.

But the biggest news this past year was the release of a black hole image in the giant elliptical M87 galaxy produced by the Event Horizon Telescope team. We’ll do a deep dive into both what they are showing, how they got it and some of the theoretical difficulties associated with interpreting radio wave data and the implications for Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

In the credits, I’ll show you the link to a wonderful new free online Astronomy textbook, and a link to the new How Far Way Is It Wiki where you can engage in discussions on the topics in this or any How Far Away Is It video. I trust you’ll find it all interesting and informative.