The first images of a black hole show Einstein was right
A group of astronomers called The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) consortium have revealed the very first image of a black hole, using a network of eight telescopes from around the world. This particular black hole is at the center of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster.
M87 is an elliptical galaxy 54 million light-years away, and its supermassive black hole is much larger than the one at the center of our own galaxy. It is 3 million times the size of earth, has a mass 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun and stretches for 40 billion kilometers.
From what I understand, the lit up part of the image is a ring of fire (called the
accretion disk). It is created at the event horizon where mass moves so quickly it heats up into a superheated gas that glows. The black hole is “black” because its gravitational pull is so strong, it swallows everything, including light.