Einstein's Shadow: A Black Hole, a Band of Astronomers, and the Quest To See the Unseeable

Fletcher (Bottled Lightning) guides readers through space and time, from a 1979 total solar eclipse in Washington State to the more current-day MIT Haystack Observatory, from remote telescopes around the world to the center of the Milky Way and back again. The common thread weaving years and places is astronomer Shep Doeleman, whose quest to see the event horizon of Sagittarius A*, the super massive black hole at the center of our galaxy, has spanned continents and decades of groundbreaking work. Through complex collaborations and the roller coaster of scientific funding, Doeleman pulled together scientists all over the world to build an Earth-sized radio telescope, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). Fletcher's telling of the quest to gain access to and manage the telescopes making up the EHT has readers sharing in the anxiety of harsh weather events and equipment malfunctions but also in the jubilation of hard-won data. Fletcher manages to humanize a complicated scientific project while providing readers with a comprehensive guide to the cosmos.