First-ever image of ‘monster’ black hole captured
In a historic feat, astronomers announced on Wednesday that they have captured the first-ever image of a black hole in a distant galaxy — the biggest tribute to the late Stephen Hawking who theorised about the existence of black holes emitting radiation in the universe.
The image — taken by a network of eight telescopes across the world — shows luminous gas swirling around a supermassive black hole at the centre of “Messier 87”, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) said in a statement.
Described by the scientists as “a monster”, the black hole resides 55 million light years from Earth and has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun.
