Supercomputers (and a few humans) create sky map of 25,000 black holes

Summary (IA Generated)

Astronomers have used a combination of low-frequency telescopes, supercomputers, and algorithms to create a vast sky map of 25,000 supermassive black holes.

The map shows thousands of twinkling dots that look like stars, but are actually enormous black holes, each of which is located in a different, distant galaxy.

Credit: LOFAR/LOL SurveyEach white dot in the map is a supermassive black hole in its own galaxy.

These emissions were detected by LOFAR (Low Frequency Array), an enormous radio telescope network spread across 52 stations in nine European countries.

LOFAR operates at the lowest frequencies that can be observed from Earth.

LOFAR’s observations are distorted by the ionosphere, a shell of free electrons that surrounds the Earth and acted like a cloudy lens over the telescope.