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  • This is the very first image of a black hole.

  • 8 radio telescopes around the world pooled data to create a picture of a gigantic black hole.

  • 6 billion times more massive than our sun, which is 53 million light years away, at the center of galaxy M87.

  • We have seen what we thought was unseeable.

  • We have seen and taken a picture of a black hole.

  • You can't see inside a black hole.

  • Because no light or electromagnetic radiation can escape its overwhelming gravitational pull.

  • Instead, the international team has imaged the outer edge, the so-called event horizon, of black hole M87.

  • It shows a bright ring of photons, light particles that would normally travel in a straight line.

  • Bent instead into a circular path by extreme gravity before they fall into the hole.

  • Inside the ring, we see the shadow of the hole itself.

  • This would not have been possible with any individual observatory.

  • But over the past two years, the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration has processed radio waves detected by the eight participating telescopes.

  • Which focused on M87 during one week.

  • Combining their data created what is, in effect, an Earth-sized telescope.

This is the very first image of a black hole.

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