The first image of a black hole was captured by creating an Earth-sized virtual observatory from a network of eight radio telescopes.

The first image of a black hole was captured by creating an Earth-sized virtual observatory from a network of eight radio telescopes.

The first image of a black hole was captured by creating an Earth-sized virtual observatory from a network of eight radio telescopes.

The first image of a black hole was created from an international telescope network

The Event Horizon Telescope united radio observatories worldwide to image the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, known as Sagittarius A*. The team couldn’t transmit their massive dataset online, so they physically flew hundreds of terabytes of data to MIT aboard airplanes.

The first-ever image of a black hole

The Black Hole at the center of galaxy M87 is ready for its close-up, becoming the first black hole to have its image directly captured. The Event Horizon Telescope caught the distant yet massive object—it's more than 55 million light years away—recording its gravity's effect on nearby hot gases.

The Event Horizon Telescope captured the first photo of a black hole in 2019

Predicted by Einstein in 1916, these invisible objects can be indirectly seen through their accretion discs and X-ray bursts. Over 40 million trillion black holes may be scattered throughout the universe.

Cygnus X-1 helped scientists confirm black holes are real and measurable phenomena

The 1964 discovery of Cygnus X-1 provided the first strong candidate, but it took decades—and a famous bet between Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne—before scientists were certain it was a black hole. Hawking's thumbprinted concession was delivered after breaking into Thorne's office.

Hubble's first light test produced an underwhelming photograph

This test represents the first time light travels entirely through an observatory's optical system and reaches its detectors, producing an image. Although the telescope's warped mirror was not discovered and announced until a month after first light, the issue was not responsible for the simplicity of the first light image.

There are likely millions of small black holes lurking undetected near us in space

Because black holes are so hard to spot directly, astronomers rely on models of galaxy and star evolution to estimate their population. A recent study used simulations and galactic data to show that about 1% of all matter in the universe is locked inside black holes.

Creating 'Interstellar's' black hole blended visual effects with real physics models

Theoretical cosmologist Kip Thorne was consulted and collaborated with the film's visual effects team to develop new rendering software, integrate general relativity, and generate ultra-high-resolution visuals. The results were so accurate, they were published in scientific journals.

Try to catch the 'sound' of black holes in gravitational wave detector data

In "Black Hole Hunter," users try to listen for gravitational wave signals from black holes in four sample data files that include substantial background noise. With each level, learn more about black holes while being faced with ever-quieter signals.

TON 618, the largest black hole ever detected, has the mass of 66 billion suns

The supermassive black hole is 18 billion light-years away and emits radiation with the brightness of 100 trillion stars. It is so massive that light would take an entire week to travel from its edge to its center.

Watch a simulation of a collapsing star becoming a black hole

When a massive star can no longer release enough energy through fusion in its core to fight off gravitational collapse, the dense core collapses first, producing an event horizon that traps light within it, including some light produced within the star at the time of collapse. As more material falls into the growing event horizon, the star will appear to eclipse itself from the inside.

How black holes form

Don’t let the name fool you: A black hole is anything but empty space. Rather, it is a great amount of matter packed into a very small area - think of a star ten times more massive than the Sun squeezed into a sphere approximately the diameter of New York City.

View a gallery of neutron stars and related phenomena captured by Chandra

Launched on July 23, 1999, the Chandra X-ray Observatory is one of NASA's "Great Observatories" and has captured high-energy astronomical phenomena, including neutron stars and their surrounding nebulae, which are composed of the outer stellar layers expelled by their predecessors. Data from other observatories, including Hubble, help produce spectacular composite images.

See to the edge of the universe with this two-decade astronomy project

A New Mexico telescope has captured astronomical data for two decades to compile this map of the universe. Starting from earth and ending at the "edge" of the universe, it shows one slice of the cosmos: a total of 200,000 galaxies.

In 1974, a pair of neutron stars provided the first evidence of gravitational waves

Observations of a pulsar—a rapidly rotating neutron star that emits light—revealed it to be part of a system of two stars that orbited one another in a shrinking orbit, indicating gradual energy loss. Calculations showed that the changing orbit was consistent with gravitational waves predicted to carry energy away from such a system.

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

Mars' orbit may provide evidence that dark matter is made of primordial black holes

Physicists at MIT have found that, statistically, one such microscopic black hole should pass through the solar system every decade, which they predict would introduce a detectable wobble in Mars' orbit. Such black holes would have formed in the early universe from collapsing gas clouds and scattered as the universe expanded.

The interaction of quantum fields with black hole curvatures makes Hawking radiation

The classic explanation of Hawking radiation depicts virtual photons emitted from a black hole's event horizon. A more accurate explanation involves null geodesics, Bogoliubov transformations, and scattered quantum field nodes to explain the emission of thermal radiation.

The European Space Agency is building a space-based gravitational wave observatory

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna will consist of three spacecraft forming an equilateral triangle that will trail Earth as it orbits the sun. Lasers will travel 2.5 million kilometers along the sides of the triangle between these spacecraft to detect massive objects undergoing mergers or inspiraling, as well as speculative phenomena (e.g., cosmic strings).

Quasars are extremely luminous cores of distant galaxies

Discovered in the 1950s through their intense radio signals, they are fueled by supermassive black holes with prominent accretion disks. The disks emit extreme radiation that heats and expels gas, halting star formation and altering the future of their host galaxies.

Webb Telescope zooms in on Orion Nebula and finds planet pairs

The Webb telescope has trained its infrared cameras on the nearest star-forming nebula in our universe, the Orion Nebula. Its images revealed a never-before-seen phenomenon: dozens of pairs of planet-sized objects in binary orbit, seemingly floating...

Colorizers convert Hubble's gray scale images into color composites of different wavelengths

The near-infrared and ultraviolet light captured by the space telescope is not visible to human eyes, but observational data of these types of light can be filtered and modified into visible colors. Many detailed images of astronomical objects are the result of combining these artificially colored images into layers.

Voyager 1 captured Earth as a 'Pale Blue Dot' from 6 billion kilometers away

On Feb. 14, 1990, NASA's Voyager 1 space probe took the farthest photo of Earth ever captured. Earth appears so small in the image that it takes up less than a single pixel out of 640,000 in the photo's frame.

Explore our favorite visualization of the immense scale of space, from an astronaut to the size of the observable universe

Replacing the sun with a black hole would quickly collapse life on Earth

A black hole of the sun's mass would only be six kilometers wide, but it would exert the same gravitational pull as the sun. This means the planets would keep their current orbits but no longer receive solar radiation.

In 1994, fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter

Hubble captured the collisions, which created massive black impact sites visible from space. It represented the first time scientists could prepare for, and observe, an interplanetary collision in real time, allowing them to gather valuable information about Jupiter's atmosphere.

Neutron stars, the remains of some massive stars after they explode in a supernova, are the densest directly observable objects in the universe.

Explore the Earth at night from space

See the planet in all its luminosity with this NightEarth app, an interactive spherical globe showing real satellite imagery of Earth. Toggle between views of real-time clouds, aurora borealis activity, and more.

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.

Visualize the path of every solar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 and see what each looks like when observed from different locations on Earth.

Track the location of the Voyager probes, currently between 13 and 15 billion miles away from Earth.

Planeterrellas create artificial auroras that mimic the atmospheric displays of light by setting up an electric field between two metal balls in a jar filled with a small amount of air.

See 33 images that became central to huge scandals, including a young Charles and Camilla, Michael Jackson's baby on a hotel balcony, and Hugh Grant's mugshot.

The first horror movie is believed to be George Méliès' 1986 short 'The Haunted Castle,' which pioneered the use of special effects

While the first exchange-traded fund (a 'basket' of different assets that can be bought and sold on a stock exchange) in the US only launched in 1993, the global ETF market has grown to more than $10T in the short time since.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

Take a 3D tour of the Hajj, Islam's annual pilgrimage to Mecca, undertaken by over 1.5 million Muslims.

Before humans, the Soviet Union and the United States sent animals—including apes, dogs, and cats—to space during the Space Race.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

See photos of Meteora, a mountainous site in central Greece, home to 14th-century monasteries perched atop soaring outcroppings.

Fish populations in the Great Barrier Reef have increased after installing waterproof speakers on the ocean floor that played recordings of sounds from healthy coral reefs.

Elk Cloner, the first computer virus to spread in public, was written as a practical joke by Richard Skrenta, a Pittsburgh high school student.

Massive 3D printers have been used to build homes by stacking layers of 'concrete toothpaste,' a fire-resistant material that effectively insulates against outside noise.

Volcanic activity may have triggered the Black Death by spewing gases that led to crop failures in Europe, thus forcing the import of grain ships with plague-infested fleas.

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.