First-Ever Black Hole Image Released

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Astronomers on Wednesday unveiled the first photo of a black hole, one of the star-devouring monsters scattered across the Universe and obscured by impenetrable shields of gravity.

The image of a dark core with a flame-orange halo of gas and plasma shows a supermassive black hole 50 million lightyears away in a galaxy known as M87, they announced during simultaneous press conferences in Brussels, Shanghai, Tokyo, Washington, Santiago and Taipei.

Data needed to construct the picture was gathered in April 2017 by the Event Horizon Telescope, a joined-up network of eight radio telescopes spread across the globe.

AFP

A handout photo provided by the European Southern Observatory on April 10, 2019 shows the first photograph of a black hole and its fiery halo, released by Event Horizon Telescope astronomers (EHT), which is the “most direct proof of their existence,” one of the project’s lead scientists told AFP. EUROPEAN SOUTHERN OBSERVATORY / AFP