Interactive simulation of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) showing how separate telescopes combine signals to achieve high angular resolution.
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To see something this small, we need a telescope the size of Earth. We can't build one dish that big, so we use VLBI. By linking telescopes across the globe, we create an interferometer. The resolution depends on the distance between them. Try increasing the baseline here. Notice how the image sharpens only when the separation approaches Earth's diameter. This is how we achieved the necessary 20 microarcsecond resolution.
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