Science

It took a telescope the size of Earth to photograph something no camera could ever see

In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration linked radio dishes across the planet into one virtual instrument and released the first-ever image of a black hole: a glowing ring of superheated gas around the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy M87, 55 million light-years away. The dark center is the black hole's shadow — light can't escape to show the hole itself.

Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results — The Astrophysical Journal Letters, April 2019

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