First Image of a Black Hole

On April 10, 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration released the first direct image of a black hole — the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87*), located 55 million light-years from Earth. The image, showing a bright ring of superheated gas surrounding a dark central shadow, was produced by linking eight radio telescopes across the globe to create an Earth-sized virtual telescope. The achievement confirmed a century-old prediction of Einstein's general relativity and provided direct visual evidence for objects that had been theorized since the work of Schwarzschild in 1916.