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M87* – the first black hole photo – Supermassive black hole
Image: en:NASA, en:STScI, en:WikiSky · Public domain
🕳️ Black holes · Extreme Objects

M87* – the first black hole photo

Supermassive black hole

M87* is a gigantic black hole in the galaxy Messier 87. In 2019 it became the first black hole ever photographed: a dark shadow surrounded by a glowing ring of hot gas.

  • 55 million light-years awayEven light – the fastest thing there is – needs 55 million years to get here.
  • ~6.5 billion × SunMass
  • Messier 87 (Virgo)Galaxy
🔭 Find it in the sky

Take a closer look

A jet across the galaxy

The jet shooting out from near M87* stretches about 5,000 light-years – longer than the distance from Earth to the Orion Nebula and back. Particles in it travel at nearly the speed of light. Magnetic fields twisted by the spinning black hole help launch them.

Data by aeroplane

The 2017 observations made about 5 petabytes of data – far too much to send over the internet. So the hard drives, weighing about half a tonne, were flown to supercomputer centres. There, computers combined the signals from all the dishes to build the picture.

Why the ring is lopsided

Light from hot gas bends around the black hole, making the ring around its dark shadow. The ring is brighter on one side because gas there is swirling towards us, which boosts its light. Even though M87* is about 1,500 times heavier than Sagittarius A*, both look about the same size from Earth.

How we found out

  1. 1918

    Heber Curtis notices a “curious straight ray” coming from M87 – a jet blasted out from near the black hole.

  2. 2017

    Eight radio observatories around the world observe together as the Event Horizon Telescope – effectively a telescope the size of Earth.

  3. 2019

    On 10 April, the first image of a black hole is revealed to the world.

  4. 2021

    A new image shows the swirling magnetic fields around it.

🤔 Something to wonder about

How can a telescope be the size of Earth?

See it yourself

The galaxy M87 is visible in a small telescope as a fuzzy ball in Virgo.

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