Global News report ; The picture — taken over a period of time two years ago by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project — is being hailed as a breakthrough, because black holes by definition don’t allow for light to escape.

“We’re seeing the unseeable,” U.S. National Science Foundation director France Córdova said at one of the simultaneous press conferences held around the world.

“This is a huge day in astrophysics.”



The first actual picture of a black hole was released on Wednesday morning.

The picture is of a blurry, uneven golden ring around a black circle. Outside the ring, the light dies off again into darkness.

It may not seem like much, but it depicts the black hole M87, which is over 54-million light years away, at the centre of a neighbouring galaxy.