When surrounded by a transparent emission region, black holes are expected to reveal a dark shadow caused by gravitational light bending and photon capture at the event horizon. To image and study this phenomenon, we have assembled the Event Horizon Telescope, a global very long baseline interferometry array observing at a wavelength of 1.3 mm. This allows us to reconstruct event-horizon-scale images of the supermassive black hole candidate in the center of the giant elliptical galaxy M87. We have resolved the central compact radio source as an asymmetric bright emission ring with a diameter of 42±3 μas, which is circular and encompasses a central depression in brightness with a flux ratio 10:1. The emission ring is recovered using different calibration and imaging schemes, with its diameter and width remaining stable over four different observations carried out in different days. Overall, the observed image is consistent with expectations for the shadow of a Kerr black hole as predicted by general relativity. The asymmetry in brightness in the ring can be explained in terms of relativistic beaming of the emission from a plasma rotating close to the speed of light around a black hole. We compare our images to an extensive library of ray-traced general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of black holes and derive a central mass of M=(6.5±0.7)×10 9 M e . Our radiowave observations thus provide powerful evidence for the presence of supermassive black holes in centers of galaxies and as the central engines of active galactic nuclei. They also present a new tool to explore gravity in its most extreme limit and on a mass scale that was so far not accessible.

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) array that comprises millimeter-and submillimeter-wavelength telescopes separated by distances comparable to the diameter of the Earth. At a nominal operating wavelength of ∼1.3 mm, EHT angular resolution (λ/D) is ∼25 μas, which is sufficient to resolve nearby supermassive black hole candidates on spatial and temporal scales that correspond to their event horizons. With this capability, the EHT scientific goals are to probe general relativistic effects in the strong-field regime and to study accretion and relativistic jet formation near the black hole boundary. In this Letter we describe the system design of the EHT, detail the technology and instrumentation that enable observations, and provide measures of its performance. Meeting the EHT science objectives has required several key developments that have facilitated the robust extension of the VLBI technique to EHT observing wavelengths and the production of instrumentation that can be deployed on a heterogeneous array of existing telescopes and facilities. To meet sensitivity requirements, high-bandwidth digital systems were developed that process data at rates of 64gigabit s −1 , exceeding those of currently operating cm-wavelength VLBI arrays by more than an order of magnitude. Associated improvements include the development of phasing systems at array facilities, new receiver installation at several sites, and the deployment of hydrogen maser frequency standards to ensure coherent data capture across the array. These efforts led to the coordination and execution of the first Global EHT observations in 2017 April, and to event-horizon-scale imaging of the supermassive black hole candidate in M87.

We present a 0.72 deg2 contiguous 1.1‐mm survey in the central area of the Cosmological Evolution Survey field carried out to a 1σ≈ 1.26 mJy beam−1 depth with the AzTEC camera mounted on the 10‐m Atacama Submillimeter Telescope Experiment. We have uncovered 189 candidate sources at a signal‐to‐noise ratio (S/N) ≥ 3.5, out of which 129, with S/N ≥ 4, can be considered to have little chance of being spurious (≲2 per cent). We present the number counts derived with this survey, which show a significant excess of sources when compared to the number counts derived from the ∼0.5 deg2 area sampled at similar depths in the Submillimetre Common‐User Bolometer Array (SCUBA) HAlf Degree Extragalactic Survey (SHADES). They are, however, consistent with those derived from fields that were considered too small to characterize the overall blank‐field population. We identify differences to be more significant in the S1.1mm≳ 5 mJy regime, and demonstrate that these excesses in number counts are related to the areas where galaxies at redshifts z≲ 1.1 are more densely clustered. The positions of optical–infrared galaxies in the redshift interval 0.6 ≲z≲ 0.75 are the ones that show the strongest correlation with the positions of the 1.1‐mm bright population (S1.1mm≳ 5 mJy), a result which does not depend exclusively on the presence of rich clusters within the survey sampled area. The most likely explanation for the observed excess in number counts at 1.1‐mm is galaxy–galaxy and galaxy–group lensing at moderate amplification levels, which increases in amplitude as one samples larger and larger flux densities. This effect should also be detectable in other high‐redshift populations.

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