Image of a Black Hole

The first image of a black hole, from the galaxy Messier
87.CreditCreditEvent Horizon Telescope Collaboration, via National
Science Foundation

Astronomers announced on Wednesday that at last they had captured an
image of the unobservable: a black hole, a cosmic abyss so deep and
dense that not even light can escape it.

For years, and for all the mounting scientific evidence, black holes
have remained marooned in the imaginations of artists and the
algorithms of splashy computer models of the kind used in Christopher
Nolan's outer-space epic "Interstellar." Now they are more real than
ever.

"We have seen what we thought was unseeable," said Shep Doeleman, an
astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and
director of the effort to capture the image, during a Wednesday news
conference in Washington, D.C.

The image, of a lopsided ring of light surrounding a dark circle deep
in the heart of a galaxy known as Messier 87, some 55 million
light-years away from Earth, resembled the Eye of Sauron, a reminder
yet again of the implacable power of nature. It is a smoke ring
framing a one-way portal to eternity.


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Good Clear Skies
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Astrocomet
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Colin James Watling
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Various Voluntary work-Litter Picking for Parish Council (Daytime) and
also a friend of Kessingland Beach (Watchman)
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Real Astronomer and head of the Comet section for LYRA (Lowestoft and
Great Yarmouth Regional Astronomers) also head of K.A.G (Kessingland
Astronomy Group) and Navigator (Astrogator) of the Stars (Fieldwork)
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Lyra Main Website: http://www.lyra-astro.co.uk/