Black Holes and Revelations - Supporting the Capture of the World’s First Image of a Black Hole

Earlier this year you may have been one of the millions of people to have seen the very first picture of a black hole. Albert Einstein first predicted the existence of black holes in 1916, with his general theory of relativity.

Because no light can escape, scientists haven’t been able to view black holes in the same way that we see stars and other objects in space. But astronomers have at last captured an image of the  phenomenon.

The image, which looks like a donut of light surrounding a black centre, is of a black hole located 55 million light-years from Earth in a galaxy known as Messier 87, and was taken with the help of one of our manufacturing partners, Conduant.

Credit: Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration

"The data used to generate the image was recorded on storage systems made by Conduant. The systems recorded signals from giant telescopes in real time with multiple radio antennas spaced across the globe", said Ken Owens, co-founder and CEO of the company.


Each antenna, fitted with atomic clocks, made a simultaneous time-stamped recording of the radiations from the black hole region analyzed later by super computers to form an actual image. The data had to be recorded in real time.

“Our systems are similar to standard IT storage systems. But our technology is about control systems and data movement from antennas to storage devices,” Owens said.

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About Conduant

In environments where large volumes of raw, high-speed data are generated (radio astronomy, high-resolution video imaging, radar surveillance) the StreamStor® product line from Conduant excels at error-free recording and playback. Unlike traditional tape-based systems or general purpose disk storage, Conduant’s ultra-fast digital data recorders and storage units ensure reliable, guaranteed and sustained performance, unparalleled in the industry.

Supporting Military FPGA Requirements in the UK

Sarsen Technology provides a wide range of rugged COTS boards and system solutions to the leading European Defense manufacturers. We have a long track record of supporting mission critical systems for land, sea & air, and we understand the importance of both process control and long-term support.

Our military customers require rugged solutions that are designed for harsh environmental conditions such as heat or cold, altitude, humidity, shock and vibration. Often the solutions we supply must be able to fit into space-constrained platforms and we can offer custom systems to suit. Also key is fast time to market, low risk, flexibility and long product life cycle. Many of the products we supply and support have industry-leading product life cycles and warranties as standard.

Our product lines include:

• MIL-STD-1553 Hardware
• Rugged VPX and COM Express Boards
• Cyber security boards and technology
• 19” Rackmount Systems
• FPGA boards based on Xilinx and Intel, including rugged Xilinx Zynq boards.

We have recently joined forces with REFLEX CES to provide their high-speed FPGA based solutions to customers in the UK and Ireland.

COMXpress Stratix® 10 SoC

REFLEX CES' designs are based around FPGA boards and firmware development, CPU and embedded software/OS, Analog and RF portions, as well as mechanical parts and custom chassis.
This combination of high performance deliverables results in rugged systems designed for harsh environmental constraints including ESD, temperature, humidity, shock and vibration. These FPGA based solutions can be combined with x86 CPU architecture or similar inside a turnkey form factor.

For more information please contact one of our engineers to discuss your requirements.