Anton Zensus

Johann Anton Zensus (born February 1, 1958 in Bremerhaven) is a German radio astronomer. He is director at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) and honorary professor at the University of Cologne.[1] He is chairman of the collaboration board of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT).[2] The collaboration announced the first image of a black hole in April 2019.[3]

J. Anton Zensus
Anton Zensus (2019)
Born (1958-02-01) 1 February 1958
Bremerhaven, Germany
NationalityGerman
Alma materUniversity of Münster
Known forVLBI, radio astronomy
Scientific career
FieldsAstrophysics, Radio Astronomy
InstitutionsMax Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy

Career and research

Zensus studied physics and astronomy in Cologne, Münster and Bonn and received his doctorate at the University of Münster in 1984. From 1985 to 1988 he worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Caltech and then as a research assistant at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Charlottesville. In 1997 he was appointed scientific member of the Max Planck Society and director at the MPIfR in Bonn. He has been an adjunct scientist at NRAO since 2001 and teaches as an Honorary Professor at the University of Cologne since 2005.[4]

As head of the research department for Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) at the MPIfR, his main research interest are extragalactic radio sources and active galactic nuclei, which he investigates with the VLBI method using radio telescopes on all continents and in space. His research group made decisive contributions to increasing the angular resolution and quality of radio astronomical images with VLBI by integrating the space-bound RadioAstron antenna into the VLBI system of radio telescopes and by developing VLBI with short wavelengths in the millimeter and sub-millimeter wavelength range.[5] His group contributed to the integration of multi-antenna radio observatories (arrays) into the VLBI system by the so-called phasing technique, in which the antennas of an array are synchronized to form a single instrument by special software.[6]

Since 2017 Zensus has been coordinator of the European RadioNet consortium, in which institutions from 13 European countries participate.[7] As Chairman of the Collaboration Board of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), Zensus is coordinating international efforts to map supermassive black holes in the universe.[8]

Using RadioAstron and earth bound radio telescopes, Zensus was part of a team that imaged the origin region of the relativistic plasma jet around the supermassive black hole of the nucleus of the galaxy NGC 1275 (Perseus A). The observations suggested that the origin of this jet originates from a broader region than previously thought (namely the accretion disk instead of the ergosphere of the black hole)[9][10]

With another worldwide interconnection of radio telescopes, the Global Millimeter VLBI Array (GMVA), Zensus was involved in a radio astronomical observation of the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way (Sagittarius A*) at a resolution not previously achieved.[11] The source in the center has a major axis of 120 microarcseconds and is of symmetrical, almost round shape. Observations at 3.5 mm wavelength predict that the disturbances caused by scattering in the EHT image of Sagittarius A* (recorded at 1.3 mm wavelength; image computations still in progress) are small.

Through the technical developments, observations, imaging efforts and scientific contributions of his group, and through the coordination of the international EHT observation consortium, Zensus contributed decisively to the image of a supermassive black hole in Messier 87 , which was published in April 2019 and is the first direct picture of a black hole[12]

Personal life

Zensus is married and has two adult sons. He is a native speaker of German and fluent in English.

Honors and prizes

References
  1. Short biography of J. Anton Zensus on Max Plack Society website
  2. RadioNet press release, Sep. 25, 2017
  3. Astronomers capture first image of a black hole, ESO press release, April 10, 2019
  4. https://www.mathnat.uni-koeln.de/sites/dekanat/archiv_bekanntmachungen/38_WS05-06.pdf
  5. MPIfR VLBI department website
  6. Lifting the veil on the black hole at the heart of our Galaxy, MPIfR press release, Jan, 2019
  7. Jodrell Bank Observatory press release, January 12, 2017
  8. RadioNet Coordinator Anton Zensus elected Board Chair of the Event Horizon Telescope, RadioNet, September 25, 2017
  9. Deep inside Perseus A, MPIfR press release, April 3, 2018
  10. G. Giovannini, Anton Zensus et. al., A wide and collimated radio jet in 3C84 on the scale of a few hundred gravitational radii, Nature Astronomy, vol. 2, 2018, p. 472–477 , Arxiv
  11. S. Issaoun, Zensus, H. Falcke, T. Krichbaum u.a., The Size, Shape, and Scattering of Sagittarius A* at 86 GHz: First VLBI with ALMA, Astroph. J. 2019
  12. An astounding coincidence with theory, MPG April 10, 2019
  13. Humbold Foundation Alumni Website
  14. de:Max-Planck-Forschungspreis
  15. http://iaaras.ru/en/about/medal
  16. https://breakthroughprize.org/News/54
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