Best chance to image a black hole

An Earth-sized "virtual telescope" is ready to take the first ever picture of a black hole - the mysterious monster object at the centre of our galaxy.

The "Event Horizon Telescope", as it is known, is actually a widely dispersed array of existing radio astronomy facilities.

When their observations are combined they should have a chance of resolving the Milky Way's super-massive black hole.

Sheperd Doeleman from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, discussed the project with our correspondent Jonathan Amos.