Imaging Black Holes with Python

Sara Issaoun is a NASA Einstein Fellow, observational astronomer at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and member of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration. Her research centers around the collection, calibration, and imaging of millimeter-wave radio observations of supermassive black holes. Supermassive black holes generate the highest energy processes in the known Universe, ejecting jets of plasma affecting galaxy environments on large scales, but their dynamics and emission mechanisms remain shrouded in mystery. She makes use of global networks of radio-telescopes to image and study the immediate surroundings of the supermassive black holes at the centers of our Galaxy and the galaxy M87. Sara is a leading contributor of the data analysis and imaging efforts that led to the first image of a black hole in 2019 and the first image of our Milky Way black hole in 2022.