Greenland Telescope Project --- Direct Confirmation of Black Hole with Sub-millimeter VLBI

Abstract

A 12-m diameter radio telescope will be deployed to the Summit Station in Greenland to provide direct confirmation of a Super Massive Black Hole (SMBH) by observing its shadow image in the active galaxy M87. The telescope (Greenland Telescope: GLT) is to become one of the Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) stations at sub-millimeter (submm) regime, providing the longest baseline > 9,000 km to achieve an exceptional angular resolution of 20 micro arc sec at 350 GHz, which will enable us to resolve the shadow size of ~40 micro arc sec. The triangle with the longest baselines formed by the GLT, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, and the Submillimeter Array (SMA) in Hawaii will play a key role for the M87 observations. We have been working on the image simulations based on realistic conditions for a better understanding of the possible observed images. In parallel, retrofitting of the telescope and the site developments are in progress. Based on three years of opacity monitoring at 225 GHz, our measurements indicate that the site is excellent for submm observations, comparable to the ALMA site. The GLT is also expected to make single-dish observations up to 1.5 THz.

arXiv comment15 pages, 6 figures, accepted by Radio Science journal

References in corpus (11)

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• The size of the jet launching region in M87
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• Evaluation of the ALMA Prototype Antennas
• Intra-Day Variation of Sagittarius A* at Short Millimeter Wavelengths

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• The Greenland Telescope (GLT): Antenna status and future plans
• Visible shapes of black holes M87* and SgrA*