Astro News
BACKGROUND
Katie Bouman was once computational imager at MIT. However, in 2013 with a surprising turn of events, rose a new ambition. After hearing astrophysicist Shep Doeleman talk about the Event Horizon Telescope she was hooked. This specific telescope aimed to obtain the first ever image of a blackhole despite it being completely unfamiliar with them. This became the beginning of a revolutionary project.
THE PROJECT
During this time, the goal was for the telescopes - scattered around the globe - to capture a shot of the blackhole which is at the centre of M87, a galaxy which is 55 million light-years away. Thus, Bouman and her team had to develop an algorithm which would take incomplete data (collected by the telescopes) to create a composite image. However, this is much easier said than done.
A JOURNEY TO CHIRP
Bouman was responsible for leading the team that would one day reach their goal. They made separate teams that tested several algorithm to reach a final picture which would show the ring surrounding the shade of M87's black hole. These teams included researchers from MIT and Harvard's Center for Astrophysics.
Eventually, CHIRP (Continuous High-resolution Image Reconstruction using Patch priors) was developed in order to process the data collected by EHT. It is was an algebraic solution and bayesian algorithm used for the extraction of information from radio signals (which were received by scattered telescopes). CHIRP bridged the gaps in the collected data. CHIRP holds great significance in radio astronomy, bringing us a step closer to making the unknown a little more known.
M87 - First ever snapshot of a Blackhole
WHERE IS KATIE NOW?
Bouman received her Ph.D in 2017 and joined Caltech in 2019 as an assitant professor of computing and mathemical sciences. She is also the co-leader of EHT's Imaging Working Group which aims to attain more than just pictures of blackholes. In May 2022, the first image of Milky Way's own blackhole, Sagittatius A*, was produced.
Katie Bouman is a prime example of merging two separate worlds, to create evolutionary work, teaching us all to step out of our comfort zones and into an opportunistic universe.
Sagittarius A* - First image of our galaxy's Blackhole