First image of a black hole

April 10, 2019

The Event Horizon Telescope, a planet-spanning array of eight radio dishes synchronized to the precision of an atom, released the first direct image of a black hole: a fuzzy orange donut of superheated gas 53 million light-years away, in the heart of galaxy M87. Katie Bouman's joyful face went viral. The unseeable had finally posed for its portrait.