why it takes 5 Petabytes (5,242,880 Gigabytes) to get an image of a black hole?

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why it takes 5 Petabytes (5,242,880 Gigabytes) to get an image of a black hole?

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2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Its effectively 2000 times better resolution than that of the Hubble Space Telescope – and if I’m not mistaken the highest resolution picture ever taken.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The 5 petabytes are the amount of raw data needed to be able to render an image from that. Getting a “picture” of a black hole is incredibly difficult because it’s very far away, so resolution is a problem. That is why pictures of black holes are taken with an array of satellites and antennas around the globe and in orbit, essentially acting together as one big sensor. This and the fact that measurements have to be taken over a fair amount of time, months or even years makes for a big pileup of data from which a picture can be calculated.