Astronomers have taken the first ever image of a black hole, which is located in a distant galaxy( 星系). The black hole is 500 million trillion km away and was photographed by a network of eight telescopes across the world. It was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT).
The announcement was made in Washington, Brussels, Santiago, Shanghai, Taipei and Tokyo. Details have been published today in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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. "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 the Universe. "
The image shows an intensely bright "ring of fire", as Prof Falcke describes it, surrounding a perfectly circular dark hole. The bright halo is caused by very heated gas falling into the hole. The light is brighter than all the billions of other stars in the galaxy combined - which is why it can be seen at such distance from Earth. The edge of the dark circle at the center is the point at which the gas enters the black hole, which is an object that has such a large gravitational pull( 引 力 ), not even light can escape.
"It is remarkable that the image we observe is so similar to that which we get from our theoretical calculations. So far, it looks like Einstein is correct once again. " said Dr Ziri Younsi, of University College London - who is part of the EHT collaboration.
Chinese scientists were involved in the observation through a telescope in Hawaii. They were also highly involved in follow-up data processing and theoretical analysis, said Shen Zhiqiang, head of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Shanghai Astronomical Observatory and a member of the EHT international team.
Shanghai and Taipei were selected as two of the cities to hold news conferences, together with Washington, Brussels, Santiago and Tokyo, a recognition of China's contribution.
"In the fields of astronomy, radio astronomy, and space astrophysics, China has made a significant contribution to this global project," Falcke said.
