It’s our first glimpse of one of the weirdest spectacles in the universe: Astronomers on Wednesday released humanity’s first-ever image of a black…
It’s our first glimpse of one of the weirdest spectacles in the universe: Astronomers on Wednesday released humanity’s first-ever image of a black hole.
The picture reveals the black hole at the center of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the „nearby“ Virgo galaxy cluster. It looked like a flaming orange, yellow and black ring.
“We have seen what we thought was unseeable. We have seen and taken a picture of a black hole,“ said Sheperd Doeleman, Event Project Horizon project director at Harvard University. “This is an extraordinary scientific feat accomplished by a team of more than 200 researchers.”
Since the black hole is, well, black, what we’re seeing in the image is gas and dust circling around the hole, just far enough away to be safe.
That hot disk of material that encircles the hole shines bright, according to NASA. Against a bright backdrop, such as this disk, a black hole appears to cast a shadow.
“For years, science fiction movies have imagined what black holes look like,“ said Duncan Brown of Syracuse University. „The picture taken by the Event Horizon Telescope shows us what they really look like.“
Images came from the Event Horizon Telescope, a collection of eight telescopes around the world specifically designed to peer at black holes. The telescopes are in Chile, Hawaii, Arizona, Mexico, Spain and at the South Pole.
This black hole’s “event horizon” – the precipice, or point of no return, where light and matter begin to fall inexorably into the hole – is as big as our entire solar system.
