People

Research Interests

My research focuses on studying supermassive black holes with sufficient resolution to directly observe the event horizon. To do this our group assembles global networks of telescopes that observe at mm wavelengths to create an Earth-size virtual telescope using the technique of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). We target SgrA*, the 4 million solar mass black hole at the center of the Milky Way, and M87, a giant elliptical galaxy for this work. Both of these objects present to us the largest apparent event horizons in the Universe and both can be resolved by (sub)mm VLBI arrays. We call this project The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT).

More From Shep

Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Harvard University
Department of Astronomy, “Imaging Black Holes with The Event Horizon Telescope”
Department of Astronomy