The First Photograph of a Black Hole

  1. In April 2019, scientists unveiled the world’s first image of a black hole.
  2. It showed the supermassive black hole in galaxy M87, 55 million light-years away.
  3. The black hole’s mass is about 6.5 billion times that of the Sun.
  4. The photo revealed a glowing ring of gas swirling around the dark core.
  5. The image was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a global network of radio observatories.
  6. Over 200 researchers collaborated worldwide to create the image.
  7. Data from telescopes on four continents were combined using supercomputers.
  8. The effort confirmed predictions of Einstein’s General Relativity near extreme gravity.
  9. The black hole’s “shadow” measured about 40 billion kilometers across.
  10. This breakthrough marked a new era in exploring the universe’s most mysterious objects.