'This is an extraordinary scientific feat accomplished by a team of more than 200 researchers.'īlack holes are extraordinary cosmic objects with enormous masses but extremely compact sizes. Doeleman of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. 'We have taken the first picture of a black hole,' said EHT project director Sheperd S. The EHT offers scientists a new way to study the most extreme objects in the Universe predicted by Einstein’s general relativity during the centenary year of the historic experiment that first confirmed the theory. The EHT links telescopes around the globe to form an unprecedented Earth-sized virtual telescope. This black hole resides 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun. The image reveals the black hole at the centre of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster.
This breakthrough was announced today in a series of six papers published in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The following press release was issued today by the European Southern Observatory.
