Wednesday, April 10, 2019

First Image of Black Hole Revealed

By JOE KELLY

A global team of astronomers revealed the first ever image of a black hole on Wednesday, supporting Einstein's theory of general relativity, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The image required nine telescopes from eight different laboratories on four continents focusing on the galaxy semi-continuously for 10 days, the New York Times reported. In the image from Event Horizon Telescopes, a dark circle sits in the middle of a bright orange ring.

The Wall Street Journal reported that this is the first direct evidence of a black hole, as astronomers have only been able to gain indirect evidence of them by observing gravitational waves coming from the center of galaxies. Any other image shown in books, magazines or online have been artist interpretations of black holes.

The black hole caught in the image is located in a galaxy in the Virgo constellation, Messier 87, which is 54 million light years away, according to the New York Times and NASA. It is 6.5 billion times as massive as our sun, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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