Observations of Black Hole M87* data captured by Event Horizon telescope (EHT) in 2018 show persistent shadow of the black hole

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The 2018 observations revealed a familiar shadow of the same size EHT found in 2017, when it took the first image of a black hole.
A black hole is an astronomical object with a gravitational pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape it.
- Black hole’s gravitation pull becomes this strong at the Event Horizon, the boundary from within which a particle cannot escape.
- Event horizon captures any light passing through it, and the distorted space-time around it causes light to be redirected through gravitational lensing.
  - These two effects produce a dark zone that astronomers refer to as the event horizon shadow.
Gravitational Lensing occurs when a massive celestial body such as a galaxy cluster causes a sufficient curvature of spacetime for the path of light around it to be visibly bent, as if by a lens.
- The body causing the light to curve is accordingly called a gravitational lens.
- It is an observable example of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
According to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, time and space are fused together in a quantity known as spacetime.
- Massive objects cause spacetime to curve and gravity is simply the curvature of spacetime.
- As light travels through spacetime, the path taken by light will also be curved by an object’s mass.

Event Horizon Telescope (EHT)

It is a network of synchronized radio observatories around the world that combine as a single telescope with an aperture the size of Earth used to observe sources of radio light associated with black holes.
It links radio telescopes across the globe to create an Earth-sized interferometer using Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI).
Presently, no Indian radio telescope is part of EHT.