News

Actions

This sketch puts the first-ever black hole photo into dizzying perspective

Posted at 5:29 PM, Apr 10, 2019
and last updated 2019-04-11 12:09:06-04

Webcomic artist Randall Munroe found a simple way to illustrate just how massive the black hole seen in Wednesday’s viral photo is.

According to NASA, the black hole at the center of Messier 87  is 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun, and Munroe’s April 10 entry on xkcd helps illustrate that.

M87 is an elliptical galaxy some 55 million light-years from Earth.