First ever Black Hole picture revealed by scientists

On Wednesday afternoon the first photo of a black hole in outer space, has been revealed for the first time.

Scientists at the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) programme showed their results at news conferences around the world today.

In a historic feat by @EHTelescope & @NSF, a black hole image has been captured for the 1st time. Several of our missions observed the same black hole using different light wavelengths and collected data to understand the black hole's environment. Details: https://t.co/WOjLdY76ve pic.twitter.com/4PhH1bfHxc

— NASA (@NASA) April 10, 2019

EHT pointed eight radio telescopes at two cosmic behemoths, one was pointing almost 54m light years away, and the other was pointing at the Milky Way.

The story of @ehtelescope’s quest to capture the first image of a black hole was covered by @SmithsonianChan’s documentary “Black Hole Hunters” premiering this Friday. #RealBlackHole #EHTBlackHole pic.twitter.com/49Ycr4c2nz

— National Science Foundation (@NSF) April 10, 2019

Director France Córdova of the US National Science Foundation said, “This is a huge day in astrophysics” and “We’re seeing the unseeable.”

As black holes do not let light escape scientists have to instead look for a ring of light, disrupted matter and radiation that circles at high speed, around the region of darkness.

If you can't wait to get stuck into all of the @EHTelescope data then take a look at the free-to-read collection of scientific papers in @AAS_Publishing's The Astrophysical Journal Letters https://t.co/gyRHCctcmt #EHTBlackHole pic.twitter.com/9UJfv0l2t9

— Physics World (@PhysicsWorld) April 10, 2019

Scientists have called the black hole “a monster” as it measures some 40bn km across and is 3m times the size of planet earth.

Prof Heino Falcke, of Radboud University in the Netherlands, who started the experiment, told BBC News, the black hole was found in a galaxy called M87.

The @EHTelescope has revealed the first-ever images of the supermassive black hole that lies at the heart of the huge M87 galaxy – find out what it means to spot the #EventHorizon and what it means for astronomy at large. https://t.co/HwUaraGaFS pic.twitter.com/cUz620dxZp

— Physics World (@PhysicsWorld) April 10, 2019

He added, “What we see is larger than the size of our entire Solar System,” he said.

“It has a mass 6.5bn times that of the Sun. And it is one of the heaviest black holes that we think exists. It is an absolute monster, the heavyweight champion of black holes in the Universe.”

Get ready for the @ehtelescope press conference this Wednesday by brushing up on your black hole anatomy!
Image: © ESO, ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser/N. Bartmann #EHTblackhole pic.twitter.com/BjcWypcOi0

— Dr Chiara Mingarelli (@Dr_CMingarelli) April 8, 2019

Dr Ziri Younsi, of University College London who is part of the collaboration said, “Although they are relatively simple objects, black holes raise some of the most complex questions about the nature of space and time, and ultimately of our existence.

“It is remarkable that the image we observe is so similar to that which we obtain from our theoretical calculations. So far, it looks like Einstein is correct once again.”