Congratulations to the Event Horizon Telescope!! They have captured the first ever image of a black hole. In their words, we can now see the ‘unseeable’.
This is an amazing achievement for science, the result from years of international collaboration from scientists all around the world. The Event Horizon Telescope is a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through global efforts with a united goal: to capture images of a black hole. And what an amazing result!!
The above image is focused on the centre of M87, a galaxy located 55 million light years from Earth. The glowing ring is created from light bending around the intense gravity of the black hole. The racing photons are trying to climb out of the gravity well, creating this firey ring around the shadow of the black hole–the closest we will ever be to ‘seeing’ the event itself.
The team at the Event Horizon Telescope have also released their papers regarding this image and the scientific discovery. To learn more, head over to their website: https://eventhorizontelescope.org/