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ALT In this illustration, a black dot representing a black hole resides at the center. It is encircled by warped stars that glitter in pink and purple shades, along with dark clouds of dust. The image is watermarked: “Illustration.” White text: “A black hole is an object with gravity so strong not even light can escape.”

ALT This image is a frame from a simulation of a star passing close to a supermassive black hole. At the center is a bright double-lobed yellow blob. Arcing through the image from the lower left, through the blob, then back up to the right is a wide band of magenta and purple, which shows trails of gas pulled from the star by the black hole’s gravity. The image is watermarked: “Simulation.” White text: “Stellar-mass black holes are three to dozens of times the mass of the Sun. Supermassive black holes contain millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun.”

ALT This is the first image of the shadow of a black hole which was taken using data from the Event Horizon Telescope. Against a black background there’s a thick ring near the middle of the image that glows in orange. The ring is dimmer at the top and brighter toward the bottom, with one bright spot right at the center bottom of the ring. The image is watermarked, “Image credit: Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration.” White text: “The first time we saw a real image of a black hole was in 2019.The Event Horizon Telescope shared an image of the black hole at the center of galaxy M87, a supermassive black hole 55 million light-years away.”

ALT A Hubble image of sky nearly filled with stars of various sizes and colors, with small empty patches where pockets of gas are visible. The image is watermarked: “Hubble Space Telescope Image.” White text: “Astronomers think a supermassive black hole lies at the center of almost every galaxy, including ours!”

ALT This illustration shows the dusty torus of an active galactic nucleus against a starry background. A large tire-shaped cloud dominates the center of this image. Embedded inside the “tire” is the black hole’s accretion disk, which is flatter than the cloud and glows in orange. At the center of the accretion disk is a black spot, depicting the black hole, surrounded by a small bright yellow ring. The image is watermarked, “Illustration.”

ALT his illustration depicts a black hole with an accretion disk and a particle jet against a starry background. The black hole lies on the left side of the image surrounded by a disk that’s tilted to take up the image’s left edge. The disk is bright white near the black hole and fades to pale pinks and reds to the outer edges of the disk. A stream of particles extends from the black hole to the right side of the image and is shown as purple tendrils. The image is watermarked, “Illustration.”