First Images of A Black Hole | 11 Apr 2019

The scientists at Event Horizon Telescope Project have released the first-ever image of a Black Hole (more precisely, of its shadow).

  • The black hole is located in the center of galaxy Messier 87, in the constellation Virgo. It is located about 53 million light -years away from earth.
  • The black hole has a mass of 6.5 billion Suns.
  • The image was made possible by the Event horizon telescope (EHT).
  • The EHT picks up the radiation emitted by particles in the galaxy heated to billion degrees as they revolve around the black hole close to the speed of light.

What is a black hole?

  • The term ‘black hole’ was coined in the mid-1960s by American Physicist John Archibald Wheeler.
  • Black hole refers to a point in space where matter is so compressed as to create a gravity field from which even light cannot escape.
  • Black-holes were theorized by Albert Einstein in 1915.

Event Horizon

  • There is a region of space beyond the black hole called the event horizon. This is a "point of no return", beyond which it is impossible to escape the gravitational effects of the black hole.

Event Horizon Telescope Project

  • EHT is a group of 8 radio telescopes (used to detect radio waves from space) located in different parts of the world.