First-ever image of ‘monster’ black hole taken

London: In a historic feat, astronomers announced on Wednesday that they have captured the first-ever image of a black hole in a distant galaxy — the biggest tribute to the late Stephen Hawking who theorised about the existence of black holes emitting radiation in the universe. The image — taken by a network of eight telescopes across the world — shows luminous gas swirling around a supermassive black hole at the centre of “Messier 87”, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) said in a statement. Described by the scientists as “a monster”, the black hole resides 55 million light years from Earth and has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun. The team of scientists took almost 12 years to capture the image of a black hole. (IANS)

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