Global collaboration captures first images of black hole

The black hole and its shadow have been unveiled by the Event Horizon Telescope, an international collaboration of over 200 researchers from Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America, including experts from UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory.

Located 55 million light-years away in the Messier 87 (M87) galaxy, the black hole is said to measure just under 40 billion kilometres across, or approximately three million times the diameter of the Earth. According to UCL, its mass is 6.5 billion times that of the Sun.

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) was established to image a black hole by linking eight ground-based radio telescopes globally to make an Earth-sized virtual telescope with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution.

Following decades of observational, technical and theoretical work, the breakthrough was announced in six papers published in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“We have accomplished something many thought impossible by imaging the shadow of a black hole and it provides the strongest evidence to date that such evasive and enigmatic entities do indeed exist. It’s the closest we can get to imaging a black hole, which is an object with such a strong a gravitational field that no light or matter can escape,” said Dr Ziri Younsi, UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory.