Massive telescope array aims for black hole, gets gusher of data

Astronomers developing the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a synchronized network of radio antennas with a viewing field as large as the Earth, hope to soon take the first ever photo of Sagittarius A*, a massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

The amount of data being collected by 10 radio antennas around the globe, often located atop mountains, has forced the astronomers to turn to helium-filled hard drives for their data storage.

For example, one of the radio telescopes that make up the EHT array is located 15,000 feet above sea level at the top of the Sierra Negra, an extinct volcano in Mexico. When researchers attempted to collect data using 32 conventional hard drives, 28 of them failed.

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