First photo of a black hole
Photographer: EHT Collaboration
Date: April 10, 2019
Location: Galaxy M87, ~55 million light-years away
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration released the first direct image of a black hole on April 10, 2019. The image shows the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy Messier 87, approximately 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun, located about 55 million light-years from Earth. The bright ring of light surrounding the dark shadow is formed by gas superheated to billions of degrees as it spirals inward. The image was assembled using radio telescope data from eight observatories around the world, effectively creating a telescope the size of Earth. In 2021, a second EHT image showed the black hole's magnetic field structure. In 2022, the EHT released an image of Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
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