JCPL Teens

Image courtesy of NASA

The Hubble Telescope has observed a black hole.  Specifically, it has taken pictures of the glowing ring of matter that is being slowly sucked into the black hole.  The scientists used the new technique of Gravitational Lensing to see this new image.  What exactly is gravitational lensing? 

"Gravity bends the structure of spacetime, and hence deflects beams of light. When the alignment is right, with one object directly behind another, the foreground object's gravity 'bends' the light like a lens, a process called gravitational lensing. Gravitational lenses typically produce multiple, distorted images of the distant object." -From Science Daily