Today, astronomers announced that they have at last managed to capture an image of one of the most elusive objects in the universe: a black hole.
The image shows a black hole enveloped by a ring of light at the heart of Messier 87, a giant elliptical galaxy in the nearby Virgo Galaxy Cluster. The black hole itself lies at a distance of 55 million light-years and has a mass 6.5 billion times that of our Sun.
This was the outcome of an international collaboration which combined the observing power of eight ground-based radio telescopes. This result will lead to further discovery and allow astronomers to gain valuable insight into the nature of black holes and their immediate environment.
