The first-ever image of a black hole

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

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.

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.

Black holes 101

At the center of our galaxy, a supermassive black hole churns. Learn about the types of black holes, how they form, and how scientists discovered these invisible, yet extraordinary objects in our universe. This three-minute video from National Geographic tutors the viewer on the basics regarding the universe's most mysterious residents.

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.

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.

The mysterious origins of the universe’s biggest black holes

Think you know everything about black holes? You might be surprised. Thought of as massive vacuum cleaners sucking up everything in their cosmic path, black holes actually accrete matter at an incredibly slow pace. Yet, some black holes existed when the universe was only a few billion years young. Learn more in this BBC report.

What lies inside a black hole remains one of the universe's greatest mysteries

At the center of black holes is a theoretical point of infinite density called a singularity. Alternatively, one theory suggests a black hole's core could form a Planck star—a mind-bogglingly tiny object just a trillionth trillionth trillionth of a meter in size.

Sagittarius A* is a massive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy

For years, it was known as a strong source of radio signals, but there wasn't enough data to adequately describe or identify it. Orbital movements of nearby stars would indicate it had 4.6 million times the sun's mass, proving it was a black hole.

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.

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.

Black holes can disrupt the formation of galaxies

A team of astronomers in Munich detected a gas cloud being stretched and torn apart by the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, preventing matter from coalescing into new stars. Energy released from siphoned gas produced warm winds that may also prevent surrounding gas from coalescing.

Fly through the deepest image of space ever taken by the Hubble Space Telescope

Taken over 11 days between 2003 and 2004, when the space telescope was aimed at a seemingly empty patch of the sky, the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field revealed about 10,000 sources of light, most of which are entire galaxies. This visualization expands the 2D image into a 3D view spanning 12 billion years.

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.

Mapping the universe's 1.3 million quasars

Quasars form the core of active galaxies where supermassive black holes devour unimaginable amounts of matter. You can see a map of all 1.3 million of these objects with this 3D map. It was assembled with data from the Gaia spacecraft and shows how the spread of dark matter across space matches that described by the Cosmic Microwave Background.

The black hole information paradox comes to an end

Quanta Magazine provides a deep dive into black holes and the black hole information paradox. For a very long time it was believed nothing could escape a black hole. Therein lies the paradox. Per quantum mechanics, whatever falls into a black hole should not necessarily be lost forever, and may eventually return. In a landmark series of calculations, physicists have proved that black holes can shed information.

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.

Zoom into this mega-photo of the Milky Way galaxy

A telescope in Chile has captured 21,400 exposures of the central region of the Milky Way galaxy, and scientists created one composite image showcasing over 3 billion celestial objects. Zoom in here.

LIGO made the first detection of gravitational waves

On February 11, 2016, scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory announced the confirmed detection of ripples in spacetime, which were produced from the collision of two black holes 36 and 29 times the mass of the sun. The detection confirmed that gravitational waves travel at the speed of light, as predicted by Albert Einstein in 1915.

View a gallery of Einstein rings

As light from a distant galaxy spreads in all directions, rays that pass around a massive object, such as another galaxy, may be bent around it. If the massive object is positioned between the distant galaxy and our telescopes, we may observe this deflected light forming a ring around it.

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.

First-ever image of the sun's south pole

For the first time, we have clear images of the sun's mysterious south pole. Captured in March 2025, by ESA and NASA's Solar Orbiter, this footage reveals magnetic chaos that could unlock answers about solar storms, the sun's strange 11-year cycle, and why its atmosphere is hotter than its surface.

Images of Jupiter in unprecedented detail

Jupiter has never seemed closer and clearer than it does in these images gathered by the James Webb Telescope. Behold beautiful auroras, hazy clouds, and more. This may not be the classic image of Jupiter (and its stormy Great Red Spot) you're used to, but it tells scientist, and us, more about the largest planet in our solar system.

Cloud 9 is a dark-matter-dominated failed galaxy

Identified in 2023, the starless, gas-rich object is the first of its kind seen by astronomers and provides a window into the early stages of galactic formation without observations relying on visible matter as a proxy. The existence of such REHLICs, or Reionization-Limited-H I Clouds, was predicted by cold dark matter cosmological models.

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.

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.

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

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

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

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

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

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

See the 25 of the best photos of auroras from around the world.

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

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.

While the sun's gravity keeps the planets in orbit, their gravity also pulls on the sun, causing it and everything else in the solar system to orbit around a mutual balance point called the barycenter—the true center of the solar system.

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

Fear or disgust related to clusters of holes and cracks, called trypophobia, may stem from evolutionary processes to help us avoid pathogens.

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

Against his wishes, Albert Einstein's brain was removed before his cremation, and the pathologist responsible stored it for decades in mason jars within a beer cooler.

This real-time tracking of the hantavirus cruise ship outbreak in May 2026 offers a unique glimpse into the global reach of the outbreak and whether the virus sickened passengers and their communities around the world.

See how each of the more than two million known species relates to each other—and to common ancestors—in this zoomable tree of life.

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.

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

Learn how monoclonal antibodies, which mimic the body's antibodies, can fight diseases like Ebola.

An initial public offering or 'IPO' is the process of a private company becoming public by putting shares of the company on the stock market for purchase.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.