13 Amazing Things Caught on Camera for the First Time

The first photograph of a black hole

Fifty years after astronomer John Wheeler coined the term ‘black hole’ to describe extremely dense objects possessing such strong gravitational pull that even light cannot escape (the existence of which Einstein had first predicted 51 years before that), a team of scientists actually captured a black hole’s image on film.

That was in 2017, but it took another two years for the image to make its way to the public—because photographing a black hole involved a worldwide network of radio telescopes from which all the data had to be strategically assembled into a cohesive whole. The photo helped scientists discover what is inside a black hole.