Discussions

If you haven't heard or seen yet, the Event Horizon Telescope team has released the first image of a blackhole. This is the supermassive blackhole that that lives in the centre of the galaxy Messier 87, one of the largest galaxies in our local area of the universe. This galaxy is 55 million light-years away.  
 
This is not an optical telescope image, but one that was made with sub-millimeter radio telescopes. The data that was collected by the radio telescope was then combined in a powerful super computer to make the image.  
 
Astronomers have seen the effects of blackholes for a while now. They have seen the effects it's gravity has on nearby o:bjects like stars and gas. It essentially took the power of radio telescopes from around the world to get the resolution to see this o:bject. And for a reference on the size of this thing, the entire Solar System can fit well within it and has a mass of 6 billion Sun's. It will be interesting to see all the new discoveries that come from this.  
 
For more details on the image and the science behind it checkout the Event Horizon Telescope website.  
 
https://eventhorizontelescope.org/

It's too bad Stephen Hawking isn't still alive to see this. He spent a good portion of his life studying this.

Hawking's Radiation, how a blackhole will die. And he likely was involved in the planning of the project.  
 
Here's a link to how radio telescopes work and how an image is produced.  
 
http://www.gb.nrao.edu/epo/image.html