 My name is Joseph Farrah, and I'm a Smithsonian fellow at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Impossible. The best thing about the Event Horizon Telescope is that the Earth is our telescope. The most exciting experience for me was seeing M87 for the first time. For this project, I did physics, I developed software, and I imaged. The hardest part of the project for me was the two nights I observed consecutively. When I saw the first image, I felt wonder. When the results come out, I'm going to tell everybody I know. My name is Mariki Homma from National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. I'm the director of MISSA VLBA Observatory, which is one branch of NAOJ, and so I'm leading a Japanese VLBA group. I would say black holes are so attractive. As an astronomical object, it attracts material, surrounding materials through very strong gravity. All the gases and matters coming down to the black hole and absorb. That's attractive to everything. Also, it's very attractive to astronomers. It's a really mysterious object and also very attractive to general public. Even school kids know, school kids heard about black holes and they are very much interested in. The best thing about this collaboration is it's really global international collaborations. There are so many people coming from different countries. Well, many, many good and top scientists from different countries. Having different ideas, different way of thinking. It's full of intelligence from many global countries. That's really wonderful. I would say the most exciting thing is yet to come. I'm trying to contribute to make the best image. The most difficult thing in the project is to find out a solution among the different opinions from different people. I was very excited to see the first black hole image. It's really surprising. But I would also say that it's nearly exactly what we have expected. So much excited. I would like to start a new thing. I mean, this is not the end of the project, but it's like start. So we still have a lot of mysteries to be solved, you know, problems to be tackled. There are still many questions about black holes. So I would like to study further in the black holes. My name is Shoko Koyama. I'm a postdoc at the SIAA, Greenland Telescope Group. So I'm mainly working on the Greenland Telescope Commissioning and also the EHD Imaging Working Group team for leader. As for black hole, I associate the world of very famous because everybody knows the world, but nobody has seen it directly. Global collaboration. When I look at the image for the first time, I wrote the proposals and performed observations at the Greenland Telescope and did the data analysis and imaging so I could experience the whole process. So the hardest part in the project for me is also the collaboration part because collecting all the efforts from all over the world is very hard. Astonishing when I saw the first image. Go for drinks with my EHD colleagues. I'm C.K. Chan. I'm an astronomer at the University of Arizona. I'm also a data scientist there. So I work on, you know, from simulation to data analysis for the EHD. It's black. It's the people. You can learn a lot from them. Finding our bug in the code. Debugging. I develop a program. I do some simulation, analyze the data and do some imaging. The hardest project for me is to coordinate time with my family. Yeah, we make it. I think I will spend some time with my family. My name is Michael Janssen and I'm a PhD student at Rapport University. Exciting and unbelievable. The best thing about the event rise in telescope is its collaborative nature. So many different people with different ideas and different perspectives. All the different aspects of the project coming together. The observers, the theorists, the instrumentalists. All of them working together and delivering one amazing product. Okay, my name is Ilse van Bemmel. I work at the joint institute for VLBI Eric, also known as Jive. And we're based in Dwingelow in the Netherlands. Black holes are massive and for me, I work in the field of massive black holes. So that's the really big ones and the smaller ones. But all of them are really cool puzzles to solve. I would say the global collaboration. That's the impact of working with people around the world. Doing science together, trying to solve puzzles together, but also realizing that politics impacts people that you actually know, which is sometimes quite challenging but also exciting to realize that all these people work together as a whole. The most exciting experience for me was seeing the first images from the 2017 data run. They really blew me away. I do a few things inside the projects. I coordinate one of the working groups together with a colleague in the US. And as part of the working group, I'm leading the software of one of the pipelines. So the development of the software that goes in there. Midnight telecons. Really that's so bizarre because your brain is just not used to working at such weird times and that for me having a family is always a challenge. But sometimes also you just have to do it. It's part of the job. The hardest part that would definitely be also the globalization because it's the different time zones, different cultures, different kind of people that you have to get together, get all their opinions and then decide on that and make sure that everybody's happy. Oh that blew me out of my chair. Yeah that was really impressive. I would probably try to improve them. The science result is just one point in time in the project and we're always learning more about how the instrument works, how people work, how new theories come about. So this is an evolution in my perspective. It's not just one point in time where you say this is it, that's done. It always continues. I would try to improve on the image. Make things better, get deeper images, better data. Event Horizon Telescope is a cool project. It's challenging but it's so worth the time. It's very motivating to be part of a group where you know that your opinion is valued, where your unique expertise is really part of a whole. My name is Kevin Kuei. I'm currently based at the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics in Akademia Siddica in Taiwan. All inspiring. It's pushing boundaries, looking at the image for the first time. The most exciting part of the project was looking at the image for the first time. I'm involved in the processing of the data, making the data, turning it into images and now I'm working on building the Greenland Telescope which will be part of the Event Horizon Telescope. The hardest part of the project is being away from my family for long periods in Greenland. I remember having goosebumps when I first saw the image. I'll share the images with my friends on Facebook. The hardest part was being away from my wife and kids for long periods of time in Greenland. My name is Sarah Sohn. I'm a graduate student at Radba University in the Netherlands. Black holes for me are terrifying. Terrifying. What I like best about the Event Horizon Telescope is that it's a big collaboration but it feels a lot like a startup. There's a lot of activity, a lot of group work and it just feels like a good community to be part of. The most exciting experience I've had part of the Event Horizon Telescope is probably going observing during a 2017 campaign at the SMT. The SMT is the sub-millimeter telescope next to Tucson, Arizona. So what I do for the project is staffing telescopes, observing a telescope's calibration and imaging. I think the hardest part of the project is really collecting the data and getting all the telescopes together and working together towards this amazing goal. So I saw the first image actually part of the, one of the imaging teams of the EHT and I actually made the image and to me just seeing it pop out so easily was just, just amazing. When the results are out, I can finally sleep. My name is Jim Moran. I'm a professor at the Harvard University Astronomy Department and senior scientist at the Smithsonian acid-physical laboratory. Well, I think wonder comes to my mind first. Such objects were never expected to exist in nature until very recently. As a matter of fact, I was a complete skeptic about black holes as recently as 20 years ago. Awesome. One image that I have of black holes is the concept of spaghettification where the gravity changes so drastically that it allows your body that you will fall into it and be stretched out into a long filament which is aptly been called spaghettification. What's really wonderful is seeing all these telescopes from around the world coming together, the South Pole, Europe, Hawaii, and it's really amazing to see the synchronization going on. The most exciting experience I think is seeing that first image of M87. It was presented to me in such a casual way. Here, look at this. It was just really a wow experience. Well, it took me completely by surprise. We had been waiting so patiently. The earlier images on AGN were interesting but not fantastic, but seeing the ring in M87 just, I almost had to sit down when I saw that. I think the basic correlation of the data is actually the hardest part. These telescopes were not meant to work together and you have to do a tremendous amount of fiddling to get the calibrations right and everything coordinated. It's a completely different experience than a dedicated interferometer. I'm a really laid-back guy so I'll just look around for the next big thing to get involved in. My name is Neil Naga. I'm from the University of Concepcion, Chile and I've been a member of the Event Rising Telescope for some time now. Before that, with the ALMA Beam former project or the ALMA Phasing project, so more than nine or 10 years. The objective I had to associate with black holes is fun. In our case, it's the opportunity for small groups to come into a big international collaboration and learn from the experts. If you can be in that room, you have a question on anything to do with black holes, you reach your hand out and you can touch five people who could answer that for you. The best thing undoubtedly for me was observing at the telescope. I help out a lot at the Apex Telescope which is spectacular, it's difficult, it's at 5,000 meters, but it's a lot of fun. Primarily right funding proposals so that my postdocs and students can have fun doing science while I'm really the office janitor. I would go back to the observing again. There are very long sessions where we start much before time to get the telescope ready. Especially at Apex, you're up at 5,000 meters all day setting up the instrument and then you come down and observe. And sometimes on your way down, you realize that something has to be switched on and then you drive up all the way again. Each telescope will tell you that it's very complicated and it's true. Each one is the most difficult telescope to operate. In the case of Apex, it's run like a university telescope, so you get to go into the telescope, fix everything that you need to all day at 5,000 meters and then you come down oxygen deprived and you have to observe all night. Disbelief. Complete disbelief. In a nice way, I mean this is exactly what we have been looking for, but after 8 years and all that long process, a few weeks of imaging and they showed us exactly what we wanted. I couldn't believe it. I thought we were, we must have been making it up. But clearly it's, that's what it is, so we're thrilled. This is just the beginning. So I'll go right back to the telescope for the next observing run. My name is Hong Yi Pu from Premiers Institute. I work on theoretical works in EHD Corporation and I am from Taiwan. I am one of the co-coordinator in a theory working group and I work on theory aspects about prediction of black-hot shadow image. There are many unknown physics and it's good to validate our ideas. It was amazing and relief. When the project results are out I will have a good sleep and move on. Mysteries and energetic. It's good to meet a lot of scientists I've been reading their papers and contribute ideas. It's good to see the idea works. From previous observational constraints people have different ideas about what we are going to see and I've found we should keep open-minded and get ready for what we are going to observe. I'm Lea Medeiros. I'm a graduate student working at Ferriero Lozel and Demetrius Psaltis. I'm affiliated with both the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Arizona Steward Observatory. The adjective I would use to describe black holes is extreme. The best thing about the event horizon telescope is the challenge that we are trying to accomplish by building something that has never been done before. The most exciting experience for me in this collaboration was the first time I saw an image of M87. Excitement but also a lot of relief. My contributions to the event horizon telescope are in connecting theoretical simulations to interferometric observables. The hardest part of this collaboration for me has been navigating the communication between the theorists and the observers. Once the results are out, I plan to defend my PhD thesis. And then once I defend my thesis, I'm going to Disneyland. My interests are more in the gravity and theory simulation realm and I have done a lot of the LBI that I did not expect to do and I've learned a lot about interferometers that I did not expect to learn. I've learned a lot about interferometers that I did not expect to learn. I am Rebecca Zulay as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Valencia in Spain. The effort of a global collaboration to try to make history. The most exciting thing for me was observing at the telescope Sagittarius A star the day of my birthday. For the project, mainly I am part of the observing team of the 30 meter telescope at Pico Veleta. I think the hardest part of the project is to be completely sure of what we were going to publish. I felt something like this is incredible. We have to continue working for the new observations and new results. In a way, I'm from Taiwan, AJA, but I'm Japanese. In Taiwan, we are building a Greenland telescope in Greenland, which may improve the image quality a lot. My interest is small g. My understanding is black hole is a singularity point of the universe so that it's very, very important to understand our universe to realize what the central matter of the galaxy I'm working for a very long time agents and such kind of activity and now we are looking at the central object as a black hole. It's an image we are waiting for a long time. In particular, in Taiwan, we are just pointing on the M87 only, because from Greenland we cannot see the site of a star. We just pointed on the M87. It's remarkable. People are not so expected from the black hole image from M87, but it happens. The question is how such a supermass black hole is created in the process of cosmological evolution. It's very important to understand how to generate our universe. What's the process of generating our universe? We are looking for the process of generating a supermass black hole to understand the whole story of the universe. My name is Kasi Grigo. I work in Bologna, Italy at the National Institute of Astrophysics, Institute for Radioastronomy. Black hole is a perfect physics laboratory. The best thing of the Event Horizon Telescope is the global collaboration. The most exciting experience with the Event Horizon Telescope has been to see the first image coming out of it. Wow! When I saw the first image of a black hole, I thought wow, fantastic. I work on the data calibration. The physics and the technology is the hardest part of the project. The second best thing was the sleepless nights and stress which caused me to lose weight. I'm Izumi Mizuno from JCMT East Asia Observatory. Unknown. The most exciting thing is when I saw the image. I did the preparation for the EHT observation with other staffs. It is like to optimize the telescope for EHT observation. So I will go to the beach in Hawaii. I'm Elisabetta Liuzzo. I'm working in Bologna in Italy at the Institute of Radioastronomy of INEF. Not adjective but the big question mark. The International Collaboration of course. There are a lot of young people inside. Seeing the first image is the most exciting thing. I'm working on calibration stuff. The most difficult part is the physics. Drink a beer. A lot of beer. Really a colleague of course. My name is Jae Young Kim. I'm currently working in the Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy in Bonn. Massive. The best thing for me is to be able to meet a number of people from different countries in the collaboration so that I can learn a number of things from people. Of course, when I first saw the images of the black holes for the first time my job is to basically image the shadow of the M87 supermassive black hole by using both conventional and recent techniques. Actually I was not excited because at various stages like there were signatures of the image already presented but I was of course very much happy to see the image. Of course I want to take some rest but of course I will keep working on my project also in order to be able to catch up on the recent progress in the field. I would like to continue working on my research based on the research we achieved in the collaboration. My name is Il Jae Cho and I'm from Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute and I'm a PhD student there. I think black because just think about it. We are finding the black thing in the black universe so it is the most interesting thing we can do. First of all I think the naming itself is quite interesting because if someone hear about the name itself who doesn't know about the black hole itself then maybe the Event Horizon Telescope is quite interesting so that is the best thing. Event Horizon Telescope itself is already so cool I think. The most exciting part was meeting the famous people in this field that was the most exciting. I mostly did the making imaging and so just I can say I was one of the pixel of the image. The most difficult part was having the telephones at early morning or very late night. It was surprising just the reason why I really surprised it that just usually it takes many steps to make an image but at the time I saw the image there was a thing so I was really surprised it is real. I realized it is real. I realized it is real. Maybe go back to another work so there is no holidays or something so I am going to do another work but still it is related with the EHT project. I'm Vincent Fisch a research scientist at MIT Haystack Observatory. If I had to describe black holes in one word it would be exciting. The best thing about the event horizon telescope is that it unites some of the best scientific minds around the world on an incredible scientific project. Great scientists doing great science. The most exciting experience was seeing the first images of a black hole shadow. I feel like these images are the culmination of all of that work. I am kind of a jack of all trades. I do scheduling, science operations a little bit with correlation looking at data, calibration. I was very excited the first time I saw the first image. For a long time this was purely theoretical. We were predicting that we would see certain features in the image but we didn't really know was it really there and now we know and it was exciting that all of that uncertainty collapsed in that moment. These are just the first papers that are coming out. There is much more science and so as soon as the first papers are out we are going to be working on the next batch of papers. As soon as the papers come out we will keep on working. We have got more papers to write, more observations to do. I am Yosuke Mizuno in Gaten University, Frankfurt. Black hole is the most mysterious object telescope and great collaboration. Black hole is the most mysterious object I said and then we never directly seen to the black hole yet. So the EHT was the first time to touch into the space resolution to actually see into the black hole. I am doing for the theoretical simulation so we understand what is the physics behind this observed image. The hardest part is the physics behind the black hole. Amazing. I am doing for the simulation and making for the theoretical model. Every day it is taken to the teleconference. So in the morning, in the midnight, anytime this because the collaboration is all about the world. So the telecon time, even for the night usually the sleeping time. See we say yes, have a telecon, I need to attend this. Take a party. My name is Ciriaco Godi. I work for two universities in the Netherlands Radboud Neimechen University and Leiden University. If I had to describe black holes with one word I would say they are mysterious. The best thing about DHT is that it is a truly global collaboration with people working in different institutes and different parts of the world and telescopes across the globe. So my main goal is to ensure the quality of the calibration of the ALMA ray within the event horizon telescope. The hardest part of the project is probably when we face sleepless weeks at the telescopes. When I first saw the first image, I literally thought they gave us a fake data, this cannot be real. The most exciting part of this project I think is that we have potentially the chance to rewrite the laws of physics. Once the results are out, I think I will go everywhere and tell everyone about the exciting results that we got. So as the magnetized gas is falling onto the black hole, it heats up and therefore generates the light that we then see. Now from our daily experience we expect that light travels on straight paths and straight trajectories we call them rays. Here the situation is very different. We have a black hole sitting right there and it is extreme gravity so it is bending the light rays away from the straight paths that we are known for and it basically distorts the image by a great amount. So, in fact, you can see things that are actually behind the black hole and that you thought were obstructed by the black hole, simply because the black hole is bending the light rays into your line of sight. So if you think about how the image is supposed to look like you expect that the black hole itself doesn't emit any light so you expect a dark region and around that dark region you expect a bright ring of emission coming from all those light rays that are strongly deflected and had plenty of time to move around the black hole and collect the light that we see. So you expect a bright emission ring surrounded by a dark region, the black hole shadow. So what the black hole is doing it is deflecting and bending the light rays away from the straight paths that we understand in our daily life and in fact it can be so strong that we can see things that are behind the black hole that we thought are obstructed by it just because the black hole is bending the light rays into a line of sight. After we computed the radiative signature of our simulations we have to compare them to the observations and this can be imagined as you are in a stadium during a football match and you have an image and you want to figure out if this person or whatever is on this image is among the spectators in the stadium so what you do is you take this image and try to match it with all the 60.000 spectators in the stadium and you do this while you rotate it, you scale it you increase the contrast and you try to figure out first what is on your image is it a person, is it a cat or whatever and try to match this to the spectators and this seems trivial but it's not it's a highly computational demanding process so we need a supercomputer and we developed a so-called genetic algorithm which is a very smart way running through these images and try to adjust them and this takes roughly a month and after this calculation time we have maybe 10 of those spectators which match your image and this is very similar to what we do in the EHD so we try to compare and match our observations with the theoretical predictions