Since no light escapes it, it cannot be seen.
But radio astronomy offers a means
To picture this cosmic stareating machine.
To map signals received from the black hole,
Requires short wavelength receiver arrays
That span the world – six sites were enrolled,
From which received signals would point the way
To patterns, that when by computer unscrambled,
Could pinpoint their source, the elusive black hole,
At a galaxy's center, and a picture assembled
Of what a black hole is like. But receivers all,
Pointing at the center of the Milky Way,
Have to by synchronized by atomic clocks
To provide the accuracy of the vast array,
And then had to rely on good weather and good luck.
And thus was born the Event Horizon Telescope
That enlisted the effort of so many teams,
That is quite daunting in its envisaged scope,
To combine the data from all radio beams.
Last spring for the first time, the trials gave some hope
Of seeing the “fringe” of interference, being a solution ,
Showing that the signals from all the telescopes
Have indeed achieved the desired resolution.
At present, some supercomputers at MIT
Are busy analyzing the received radiations,
And there is hope that soon we all will see
What Hawking's saw in his imagination...