orange because the light and gas are so hot, heated
to millions of degrees by the friction of gravity.
That gravity creates a funhouse effect where you
can see light from both behind the black hole
and behind you as the light curves and circles
around the black hole.
The project cost $50 million to $60 million, with
$26 million of that coming from the National
Science Foundation.
Johns Hopkins astrophysicist Ethan Vishniac,
who was not part of the discovery team but
edits the journal where the research was
published, pronounced the image “an amazing
technical achievement” that “gives us a glimpse
of gravity in its most extreme manifestation.”
He added: “Pictures from computer simulations
can be very pretty, but there’s literally nothing