A black hole, once a mathematical curiosity, is brought to light
Blue Marble, meet Black Shadow.
In what Carlos Moedas, the European commissioner of research, called “a huge breakthrough for humanity,” the Event Horizon Telescope team revealed the first-ever image of the “shadow” of a black hole.
The color-shifted image, an ethereal swirling glow encircling a stark black disc, shows millimeter-wave radiation surrounding a black hole at the center of M87, a galaxy more than 50 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo.
Created using data from eight radio telescopes around the earth run by a global consortium of scientific institutions, the Event Horizon Telescope’s image could prove as much of an iconic image of a black hole
