Hell or God's Eye? [View all]

Here's the first image ever of a supermassive black hole, just released. It's at the center of Messier 87 galaxy, the largest galaxy we know of, about 54 million light-years away. The image was put together from multiple radio telescopes on earth in a massive project to use them as one huge telescople.

It's an event that marks an enormous achievement of science and of the scientific method. My thread title is, of course, facetious. It is believed that such black holes are common at the center of many, if not most galaxies, including our own Milky Way galaxy. Now, we have confirmation of the existence of one of them.

Start with this tweet to learn more from the National Science Foundation, one of the sponsors of the research.

Link to tweet