M87: The Black Hole We Finally Saw*

M87* is a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy Messier 87, about 55 million light-years from Earth. In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope captured the first-ever image of a black hole’s shadow. The bright ring isn't the black hole itself—it comes from extremely hot gas and light being bent by the black hole's enormous gravity. A black hole forms a region where gravity becomes so strong that, beyond the event horizon, nothing—not even light—can escape. M87* is estimated to have a mass of about 6.5 billion Suns. What you're seeing is one of the most extreme objects ever observed in the universe.