Earth sees first image of black hole

The world is seeing the first-ever image of a black hole Wednesday, as an international team of researchers from the Event Horizon Telescope project released their look at the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy Messier 87 (M87). The image shows a dark disc "outlined by emission from hot gas swirling around it under the influence of strong gravity near its event horizon," the consortium said.
"As an astrophysicist, this is a thrilling day for me," said National Science Foundation Director France A. Córdova.
The enormous black hole is some 55 million light-years from Earth in the Virgo galaxy cluster, with a mass some 6.5 billion times that of our sun.
"We are delighted to be able to report to you today that we have seen what we thought was unseeable. We have seen and taken a picture of a black hole," said EHT Director Shep Doeleman of Harvard University.
Researchers at the Event Horizon Telescope project say they were able to create an image of a black hole by using a network of eight radio telescopes to create "a virtual telescope dish as large as the Earth itself," the National Science Foundation says.