Scientists believe they may have taken the first ever picture of a black hole after setting up a network of telescopes stretching from Hawaii to Antarctica to Spain.

Featured Image VIA

The telescopes were positioned to capture the galaxy for five nights running. It will take months to develop the image, but if successful, the results should help uncover some mysteries about the universe.

Michael Bremer, an astronomer at the International Research Institute for Radio Astronomy (IRAM) and a project manager for the Event Horizon Telescope said:

Instead of building a telescope so big that it would probably collapse under its own weight, we combined eight observatories like the pieces of a giant mirror.

This gave us a virtual telescope as big as Earth — about 10,000 kilometres in diameter.

This allowed room for detail that would not have been possible with just one large telescope. The targeted black hole in question is hidden in the centre of the Milky Way in a region called the Sagittarius constellation, around 26,000 light years away from earth. The gravity and light sucking hole weighs as much as four million suns.

For more perspective on the telescope itself, apparently the virtual equipment is powerful enough to spot a golf ball on the moon.

Image VIA

I don’t know about you, but all of these details are giving me a fresh outlook on how insignificant we as humans really are. Prepare for more of this when the official black hole image is finally developed.

While you’re waiting, check out these images that are guaranteed to make you realise how insignificant human life is.