'Maelstrom at the gates of Hell': Astronomers unveil first ever black hole image
This a star-devouring monster in all its glory.
Astronomers on Wednesday unveiled the first photo of a black hole, one of the star-devouring monsters scattered across the Universe and obscured by impenetrable shields of gravity.
The image of a dark core with a flame-orange halo of gas and plasma shows a supermassive black hole 50 million lightyears away in a galaxy known as M87, they announced during simultaneous press conferences in Brussels, Shanghai, Tokyo, Washington, Santiago and Taipei.
Data needed to construct the picture was gathered in April 2017 by the Event Horizon Telescope, a joined-up network of eight radio telescopes spread across the globe.
The technique, which has been used to make radio images for many decades, provides results similar to using a single telescope as big as the area over which the smaller ones are located.The ETH project used eight telescopes spread over different locations in the US, Chile, Spain, Mexico, Antarctica, Mexico, Denmark and France to create a result similar to having used an Earth-sized telescope."The blackhole itself is like a giant lens. The light coming from behind the blackhole will not come in a straight line, like usual, but bend around its edges," Bhattacharyya said.
The distribution of the bent light, combine with the shape of the blackhole's shadow, will give a lot of information about the blackhole and its gravitational properties.
Space ensthusiasts took to Twitter to express their excitement as they count down to the moment.
"I think in human history we are the first generation to see the first ever picture of #Blackhole," one user wrote.
"This is epic, legendary, totally mind blowing. The inner kid in me is jumping up and down," another user said.