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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Science
Hannah Devlin Science correspondent

Revolutionary imaging of black hole aims to prove they are not ‘evil vacuum cleaners’

Dark round image surrounded by orange light
A picture released in 2019 of the shadow of the black hole at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy. Now, astronomers want to capture a moving image of it. Photograph: Getty Images

Dark, hungry and inescapable: black holes are often portrayed as the ultimate cosmic villains.

But now astronomers are preparing to capture a movie of a supermassive black hole in action for the first time, in observations that could help reveal another side to these elusive – and perhaps misunderstood – space objects.

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