First photo of a black hole

This is an image of a black hole at the center of the Messier 87 galaxy, which is over 50 million light-years away from Earth. 

It was photographed by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), which is made up of several radio telescopes around the world that works together. Data from their observations were merged together in a supercomputer to create the image. 


The data had to be mailed using hundreds of hard drives rather than sent thorough the internet because the data was too large. 

The EHT director said we have now seen what we thought was unseeable, we have seen and taken a picture of a black hole. 

A black hole is formed when a massive star dies. It first explodes, then its core collapses into itself and becomes very, very dense with gravity so powerful it “sucks in” light. 


The EHT said the photograph does not show the black hole itself, but what we are seeing is the shadow of it by looking at the bright area around its edge, called the “event horizon.” 


The black hole has a mass of 6.5 billion times that of the sun. 

EHT said the photograph confirmed Albert Einstein’s predictions about the size and shape of black holes.

There is a black hole in the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, and the EHT team is now imaging it.


Nobody knows what happens when something falls into a black hole. 


Stephen Hawking said if an astronaut was sucked in feet first, its legs would be stretched like spaghetti due to the gravity. 

https://www.axios.com/first-photo-of-a-black-hole...

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47873592