Professor of Theoretical High Energy Astrophysics
Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy/GRAPPA
University of Amsterdam
Science Park 904, rm. C4.151
1098 XH Amsterdam, Netherlands
T +31 20 525 7478/7491
s.b.markoff@uva.nl

I work at the interface of Astrophysics and Astroparticle Physics, and am interested in a variety of problems relating to the accretion process especially around black holes, both big and small.  I am a member of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, serving on its Science Council from 2016-2022 (Vice Chair from 2019), and now sit on its Science Board.  I also co-coordinate the Multi-Wavelength Science WG, and am a member of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Project.  I am currently co-PI of the ERC Synergy Grant “BlackHolistic” to better understand black holes of all scales, including building a new mm-radio dish in Namibia (the Africa Millimeter Telescope, or AMT) in partnership with the University of Namibia.  By augmenting the EHT array with the AMT we will be able to make the first movies of the event horizon region of a supermassive black hole, as well as use the AMT on its own to study transient black hole outbursts.


Group Blog

How to answer grandma’s space questions

Some time ago, I was sitting at a family gathering when my grandmother asked me: “What is a black hole?”. I was in my second year of the astronomy bachelor’s in Chile, the first-ever image of the M87 black hole had just been made public by the Event Horizon Telescope and it was all over international news. I noticed that other people around me stopped their conversations and started listening to my response: “Well, you know how the Earth has gravity we can’t escape? That’s how we stay on the earth instead of flying into space. A black hole has such strong gravity that light cannot escape. Therefore, it’s a fully dark object in space”. My answer was not... Continue reading →

Latest News

Bringing the band back together!

First, the new news

It’s the start of a new year so of course I made a bunch of resolutions that likely won’t stick, but one of them was to start doing more research blogging on our site, and to encourage my group to do better here too, after a longish hiatus. Why the hiatus? At least from my side I guess the fallout from the pandemic has been … Continue reading →

Where I Am / Will Be

Vacation
January 16, 2025 - January 20, 2025
CTAO consortium meeting
May 12, 2025 - May 16, 2025
Location: Garching
ISSI meeting
June 29, 2025 - July 4, 2025
Location: Bern Switzerland
EHT collab mtg
July 14, 2025 - July 18, 2025
Location: Berlin