Evidence of the existence of black holes – mysterious places in space where nothing, not even light, can escape – has existed for quite some time, and astronomers have long observed the effects on the surroundings of these … In the NewsAccomplishing what was previously thought to be impossible, a team of international astronomers has captured an image of a black hole’s silhouette. The black sphere represents the event horizon of M87*, which is smaller than the 'shadow' it casts (the dark region inside the accretion disk, as shown in the image released by the EHT). The black hole in question is about 53 million light years away in the center of a galaxy called Messier 87, or M87 for short.
The black hole in that image lurks at the heart of a galaxy known as M87, which is the sort of moniker modern astronomers use to name what they study.
Using the Event Horizon Telescope, scientists obtained an image of the black hole at the center of the galaxy M87. The size it covers in our sky “is pretty darn similar,” says EHT team member Özel. But it’s also about 1,000 times as massive as the Milky Way’s giant. So astronomers have denoted the object as M87* (the asterisk refers to a black hole, just like Saggitarius A* refers to the likely black hole in our own galaxy).
The black hole is outlined by emission from hot gas swirling around it under the influence of strong gravity near its event horizon. Sgr A* only weighs the equivalent of roughly 4 million suns. M87’s extra heft nearly compensates for its greater distance. Black hole picture: Not much longer before we see Milky Way black hole Professor Larry Kimura, a language expert at the University of Hawaii, offered the name in a bid to honour his Hawaiian heritage. This model features the M87* black hole with its accretion disk and two jets of high-energy particles. Media caption M87: The significance of the first ever image of a black hole. That black hole you've seen everywhere now has a name. M87’s black hole sits about 55 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo.
It's been christened Powehi -- a Hawaiian phrase referring to an "embellished dark source of unending creation." (There is a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy — the Milky Way.) In collaboration with astronomers, a Hawaiian language professor has now given M87* a more poetic name.