MIT News reported on April 10 that an international team of over 200 astronomers had captured the first direct images of a black hole. They accomplished this remarkable feat by coordinating the power of nine major radio observatories on four continents, to work together as a virtual, Earth-sized telescope. In a series of papers published in a special issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters, the team revealed four images of the supermassive black hole at the heart of Messier 87, or M87, a galaxy within the Virgo galaxy cluster, 55 million light years from Earth.

An international team of over 200 astronomers has captured the first direct images of a black hole. The group accomplished this remarkable feat by coordinating the power of eight major radio observatories on four continents, working together as a virtual, Earth-sized telescope. Several agencies have written on the project, including the National Science Foundation, European Southern Observatory,
MIT, Goethe University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.