Black Hole Pictures Released Today

The first ever true image of a black hole, which could reveal the shape of the mysterious, warped region of the space-time fabric, which has fuelled human imagination and inspired numerous sci-fi movies and literature for generations could be captured.

To capture an image of such a large space object, scientists used a Nobel Prize-winning concept called 'Aperture Synthesis', described by British astronomer Martin Ryle where data from many small telescopes placed far apart are combined.

Using data from six telescopes located across the world, the scientists involved in the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project have imaged the Sagittarius A* -- the black hole located at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy and another massive black hole 53.5 million light-years away in galaxy M87.

The gravitational pull of black holes lets nothing, not even particles and electromagnetic radiation such as light escape from inside it. This makes imaging a black hole nearly impossible. Basically, in the background light, the shadow of the black hole can be seen. This is extremely important because although we had a lot of evidence about the existence of black hole, 'seeing is believing'," said Sudip Bhattacharyya, Associate Professor at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai.