It looks like a fuzzy orange donut. Or maybe a celestial onion ring left in the microwave too long. When the world first saw a picture of a real black hole in 2019, some people were actually underwhelmed. They expected a 4K, high-definition IMAX spectacle like the one in Interstellar. Instead, we got a blurry, glowing circle.
But here is the thing: that blur is arguably the most significant image in the history of human sight.
You aren't looking at light. You’re looking at the absence of it. The darkness in the center is the event horizon, the point of no return where even light gets swallowed whole. The glowing ring? That’s superheated gas and dust screaming as it circles the drain at nearly the speed of light. It’s a graveyard. And we took a photo of it from 55 million light-years away.
Think about that distance.
The Impossible Camera: How We Got the Picture of a Real Black Hole
You can't just point a Nikon at Messier 87 (M87) and hope for the best. To see something that small and that far away, you would need a telescope the size of the entire Earth. Since we can't exactly build a glass lens 8,000 miles wide, scientists got creative. They used a technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI).
Basically, they turned the planet into one giant sensor.
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) isn't one machine. It’s a network of eight ground-based radio telescopes scattered across the globe—from the high deserts of Chile to the frozen wastes of Antarctica. By syncing these dishes using atomic clocks, they created a "virtual" telescope with the resolving power of the Earth’s diameter. It is so precise that if you were standing in New York, you could use it to read a newspaper in a sidewalk café in Paris.
Honestly, the logistics were a nightmare. They collected so much data—five petabytes—that it was too much to send over the internet. They literally had to fly crates of hard drives from the South Pole to processing centers.
Why It Looks Like a Donut
The shape isn't an accident. Einstein predicted this over a century ago. According to General Relativity, the massive gravity of the black hole warps space-time itself. This bends the path of light, creating a "photon ring."
📖 Related: Installing a Push Button Start Kit: What You Need to Know Before Tearing Your Dash Apart
The bottom part of the ring is brighter. Why? Because that part of the accretion disk is rotating toward us. It’s called relativistic beaming. It’s basically a Doppler effect for light. It proves that the gas around the black hole is moving at mind-bending speeds. If it looked like a perfectly uniform circle, it would actually mean our understanding of physics was wrong.
M87* vs. Sagittarius A*: A Tale of Two Giants
While the M87* image was the first, it wasn't the only one. In 2022, the EHT team released a picture of a real black hole right in our own backyard: Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the beast at the center of the Milky Way.
[Image comparing M87* and Sagittarius A* black holes]
They look similar, but they are very different animals.
M87* is a monster. It’s 6.5 billion times the mass of our sun. It’s so big that our entire solar system could fit inside it comfortably with room to spare. Because it’s so massive, things move "slowly" around it. It takes days or weeks for the gas to complete an orbit, making it a relatively stable target for a camera.
Sgr A* is the "small" one. It’s only 4 million solar masses. Gas orbits it in mere minutes. This made taking its picture incredibly difficult, like trying to photograph a puppy that won't stop chasing its tail. The EHT team had to develop entirely new algorithms to account for the rapid changes in brightness while they were still "exposing" the image.
Is It "Real" or Just a Map?
One of the biggest misconceptions is that this is a "photograph" in the way we usually mean it. If you flew a spaceship to M87, would it look like the orange donut?
Sorta.
👉 See also: Maya How to Mirror: What Most People Get Wrong
The EHT captures radio waves, not visible light. Radio waves can punch through the thick clouds of dust and gas that block our view of the galactic center. To make the image viewable for humans, scientists mapped different radio intensities to different colors. They chose orange and yellow because they feel "hot" and "bright," which fits the physics of an accretion disk.
So, it's a visualization of real data. It’s not an artist’s rendition. It’s a map of radio emission intensity. Every pixel is backed by a mountain of math.
What We Learned That Changed Everything
Before these images, black holes were math. They were a solution to an equation that seemed too weird to be true. Einstein himself was skeptical that they could actually exist in nature. These pictures turned "maybe" into "definitely."
- Einstein was right (again): The shadow of the black hole was almost exactly the size and shape predicted by General Relativity.
- Magnetic fields matter: Later polarized versions of the M87* image showed twisted magnetic field lines. These fields are what launch those massive "jets" of plasma that shoot out from the centers of galaxies.
- The "Shadow" is real: We finally saw the event horizon's silhouette. It confirmed that there is a place in the universe where physics as we know it simply stops.
The Problem with "Interstellar"
Kip Thorne, the Nobel laureate who advised on the movie Interstellar, worked with VFX artists to create "Gargantua." It’s a beautiful, crisp image of a black hole with a glowing line across the middle. That line is the back of the accretion disk being bent over the top and bottom of the black hole by gravity.
Why don't we see that in the EHT picture?
Resolution. Our current telescopes aren't sharp enough to see the fine structure of the disk. We see the "gross" features. Also, M87* is tilted at an angle that makes it look more like a ring than the side-on view of Gargantua. If we had a telescope 100 times better, the real picture might look much more like the movie.
Where We Go From Here
We aren't done. The EHT is adding more telescopes. They are talking about putting radio dishes in space to create a "telescope" larger than the Earth.
The goal? A movie.
✨ Don't miss: Why the iPhone 7 Red iPhone 7 Special Edition Still Hits Different Today
Scientists want to see M87* and Sgr A* in real-time. They want to watch the plasma swirl. They want to see how the "jets" are born. This isn't just about pretty pictures; it’s about understanding the engines that shape galaxies. Without these black holes, the Milky Way might not have formed the way it did. We might not be here.
Actionable Steps for Exploring Black Holes
If you want to move beyond just looking at the "orange donut" and actually understand the science, here is how to dive deeper:
1. Track the Next Observations
The Event Horizon Telescope doesn't run 24/7. They observe in "campaigns" when the weather is clear at all sites simultaneously. Check the official EHT website for upcoming observation dates and technical blogs.
2. Use "Eyes on the Solar System"
NASA’s "Eyes" app is a free tool that lets you visualize the scale of these objects. You can compare the size of Sgr A* to our own sun to get a true sense of the density we're talking about.
3. Look at the Multi-Wavelength Data
The black hole isn't just a radio source. Look up the Chandra X-ray Observatory's images of M87. When you layer the X-ray data (showing the massive jets) over the EHT radio data (showing the core), you get a much fuller picture of how the black hole interacts with its environment.
4. Follow the ngEHT Project
The "next-generation EHT" (ngEHT) is the current push to add more dishes and higher frequencies. This is the project that will eventually deliver the first high-speed video of a black hole.
5. Read the Source Material
If you have a background in physics (or just a lot of patience), look for the 2019 "Letters" in The Astrophysical Journal. Seeing the raw data plots makes you realize that the "picture" is actually a triumph of data processing and error correction.
The picture of a real black hole isn't just a trophy for the mantelpiece of science. It’s a tool. It’s the first time we’ve been able to stare into the abyss and see something looking back. And as it turns out, the abyss is a lot more crowded and violent than we ever imagined.