Astronomers with the Event Project Horizon released the first-ever image of a black hole Wednesday morning.
“We have taken the first picture of a black hole,” said project director and Harvard astronomer Sheperd Doeleman. “This is an extraordinary scientific feat accomplished by a team of more than 200 researchers.”
The project used specially designed telescopes located around the globe in Arizona, Chile, Hawaii, Mexico, Spain, and the Antarctic. The Event Horizon Telescope, which is comprised of a network of radio antennas.
In a historic feat by @EHTelescope & @NSF, a black hole image has been captured for the 1st time. Several of our missions observed the same black hole using different light wavelengths and collected data to understand the black hole’s environment. Details: https://t.co/WOjLdY76ve pic.twitter.com/4PhH1bfHxc
— NASA (@NASA) April 10, 2019
The astronomers on the project spent two years putting the image together through computer analysis from observations from the antennas.
Black holes are created when a star dies and collapses, creating a gravity pull that not even light can escape. The image released by scientists is really an outline of an image of a black hole, capturing the light around the “point of no return” on the edges of the black hole.
“We’ve exposed a part of our universe we’ve never seen before,” Doeleman said.
