One of the ultimate observation goals in astrophysics is to directly observe the immediate surrounding of a black hole with angular resolution comparable to its event horizon. Observing and imaging its event horizon would be extremely important because it would open a new window on the study of General Relativity in the strong field regime, accretion and outflow processes at the edge of a black hole, the existence of an event horizon, and fundamental black hole physics, e.g. spin.
ASIAA has access to Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, and the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) and the Submillimeter Array (SMA) in Hawaii, linked together as a VLBI system, a potential angular resolution of a few micro-arcseconds can be achieved. There are two supermassive black holes (SMBH) with apparent sizes large enough to resolve with VLBI at submillimeter (submm) wavelengths: SgrA* at the Galactic Center, and the nucleus of M87. ASIAA proposed to add a fourth telescope to form a triangle with these telescopes. The presence of these telescopes will enable imaging, which would not be possible with a single baseline consisting of the JCMT/SMA and ALMA.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) in the United States awarded the 12m ALMA-North America Vertex Prototype Telescope to a team led by the ASIAA and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) in 2011. We proposed to deploy the 12m Telescope to Greenland in order to pursue submm-VLBI. Given the presence of the South Pole Telescope (SPT) in South Pole, submm-VLBI can be done for the southern sky by combining the SPT with the JCMT/SMA and ALMA. For the northern sky, Summit Station at 3200m in Greenland in the Arctic Circle, would be the best location for submm-VLBI with the SMA and ALMA. We finished the construction of the 12-m telescope at Thule, Greenland, and now renamed the Greenland Telescope (GLT).
* collaborating with Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, MIT Haystack Observatory, & National Radio Astronomy Observatory
