first ever pic of black hole

Astronomers have taken the first ever image of a black hole, which is located in a distant galaxy.

It measures 40 billion km across - three million times the size of the Earth - and has been described by scientists as "a monster".
The black hole is 500 million trillion km away and was photographed by a network of eight telescopes across the world.
Details have been published today in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
It was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a network of eight linked telescopes.
Prof Heino Falcke, of Radboud University in the Netherlands, who proposed the experiment, told BBC News that the black hole was found in a galaxy called M87.
"What we see is larger than the size of our entire Solar System," he said         

  credit for photo or video is to; BB C news.

"It has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun. And it is one of the heaviest black holes that we think exists. It is an absolute monster, the heavyweight champion of black holes in theUniverse."                 expected photo of first ever black hole      

            What Is a Black Hole?     

                               
An artist's drawing a black hole named Cygnus X-1. It formed when a large star caved in. This black hole pulls matter from blue star beside it.
Credits: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

An artist's drawing shows the current view of the Milky Way galaxy. Scientific evidence shows that in the middle of the Milky Way is a supermassive black hole.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Black hole Sagittarius A
This image of the center of the Milky Way galaxy was taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Credits: NASA/CXC/MIT/F.K. Baganoff et al.

Sagittarius A* is the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
Credits: X-ray: NASA/UMass/D.Wang et al., IR: NASA/STScI

This article is part of the NASA Knows! (Grades K-4) series.


A black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light can not get out. The gravity is so strong because matter has been squeezed into a tiny space. This can happen when a star is dying.

Because no light can get out, people can't see black holes. They are invisible. Space telescopes with special tools can help find black holes. The special tools can see how stars that are very close to black holes act differently than other stars.


How Big Are Black Holes?
Black holes can be big or small. Scientists think the smallest black holes are as small as just one atom. These black holes are very tiny but have the mass of a large mountain. Mass is the amount of matter, or "stuff," in an object.

Another kind of black hole is called "stellar." Its mass can be up to 20 times more than the mass of the sun. There may be many, many stellar mass black holes in Earth's galaxy. Earth's galaxy is called the Milky Way.

The largest black holes are called "supermassive." These black holes have masses that are more than 1 million suns together. Scientists have found proof that every large galaxy contains a supermassive black hole at its center. The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy is called Sagittarius A. It has a mass equal to about 4 million suns and would fit inside a very large ball that could hold a few million Earths.