Have you ever seen a black hole? The truth is likely to be “yes” and “no.” This is because we can never actually “see” a black hole, but rather we can observe the effects of the mind-blowing physics that occur around these incredible cosmological objects. Simply put, a black hole is an incredibly dense object whose gravity is so intense that nothing (not even light) can escape it. They form when a massive star collapses under its own weight at the end of its life, crushing an enormous amount of matter into an infinitely small point. Since no light can escape them, they are effectively invisible. And yet, the regions around a galaxy’s central supermassive black hole may be the brightest part of the entire galaxy. Credit: Science Photo Library – MARK GARLICK / Getty Images No light, but very bright There is a “point of no return” in black holes, which is the place where the “escape velocity” exceeds the speed of light. This is known as the black hole’s event horizon. However, although black holes are famous for being the vacuum cleaners of the Universe, not everything is “absorbed” by a black hole. The gravity of a black hole is extreme, to the point that it constantly attracts material towards it. As this material falls inward, some of it forms an “accretion disk” of material that rotates around the black hole. That material gets very hot, causing the accretion disk to glow in different wavelengths of light and even generating powerful jets of material that shoot away from the black hole into space. That material does not escape from the interior of the black hole, but rather escapes from the black hole’s immediate environment. And this is how astronomers can observe and imagine the presence of black holes, not directly, but indirectly by observing and imagining the effects of the black hole. Here we’ve rounded up some of the best and most striking images of black holes, showing how their sheer power transforms their surroundings to produce scenes of cosmic chaos and serene beauty. This image captured by the Chandra X-ray Observatory shows XTE J1118+480, a binary system of a black hole and another object (likely a main sequence star) shooting jets into space. Credit: NASA/CfA/J.McClintock & M.Garcia The supermassive black hole at the center of our own galaxy is known as Sagittarius A*. In this image, the white dot in the center is the black hole. Orange represents data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array, while blue is Chandra X-ray data. A cone-shaped cavity is visible as an absence of cold gas in the ALMA data, filled by hot, X-ray-emitting gas in the Chandra data. X-rays: NASA/CXC/Northwestern Univ./M. Gorski; Radio: ESO/NAOJ/NRAO/ALMA; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Arcand and P. Edmonds This image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows how bright the core of a galaxy can be, driven by the central supermassive black hole. It shows the galaxy M77 and its central supermassive black hole. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA and CSA, A. Leroy This is the first image ever captured of two black holes orbiting each other, in quasar OJ287. The image shows radio light glowing gas around black holes. Credit: Valtonen, Mauri et al., The Astrophysical Journal, 2025 This image shows a possible rare object known as an intermediate mass black hole (IMBH), a rare class of black holes. Called NGC 6099 HLX-1, it appears to reside in a compact star cluster in a giant elliptical galaxy. Credit: X-rays: NASA/CXC/Inst. of Astronomy, Taiwan/YC Chang; Optical/UV: NASA/ESA/STScI/HST; Image processing: NASA/STScI/J. DePasquale An image showing the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way (the central bright spot) as seen by the MeerKAT radio telescope. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, SARAO, Samuel Crowe (UVA), John Bally (CU), Ruben Fedriani (IAA-CSIC), Ian Heywood (Oxford) Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory image of a galaxy 600 million light years away that hosts the signature of a roving supermassive black hole. The bright spot is the tidal disturbance event AT2024tvd, which is a flash of radiation caused by the supermassive black hole eating a star. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, Yuhan Yao (UC Berkeley); Image processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI) A Chandra X-ray Observatory image of the black hole J1610+1811 and its jet, 11.6 billion light years from Earth. Credit: X-rays: NASA/CXC/CfA/J. Maithil et al. Illustration: NASA/CXC/SAO/M. Weiss; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk A bright flare from the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, seen in infrared light by the James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: Farhad Yusef-Zadeh/Northwestern University Image showing D9, the first pair of stars ever found near Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Credit: ESO/F. Peißker et al. Galaxy NGC 5084, using data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory on a visible light image of the galaxy. The Chandra data, in purple, show four columns of gas coming from a supermassive black hole spinning on its side at the galaxy’s core. Credit: X-rays: NASA/CXC, AS Borlaff, P. Marcum et al.; Complete optical image: M. Pugh, B. Diaz; Image processing: NASA/USRA/L. Product A strange V-shaped structure called C4, caused by a jet from a supermassive black hole at the center of the Centauri A galaxy that crashed into an unknown object. Credit: Main image: NASA/CXC/SAO/D. Bogensberger et al. Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk; Wide Field Composite: X-ray (Chandra): NASA/CXC/SAO/D. Bogensberger et al. X-rays (IXPE): NASA/MSFC; Optical: IT; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk Hubble Space Telescope image of the galaxy merger MCG-03-34-064. Three bright spots can be seen. Two are colliding supermassive black holes and the third is a mass of gas. Credit: NASA, ESA, Anna Trindade Falcão (CfA); Image processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI) The Phoenix Cluster, home of the Phoenix A* black hole, the bright light source at the center. Credit: X-rays: NASA/CXC/MIT/M.McDonald et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; Radio: TIFR/GMRT X-ray image showing the ‘Death Star’ black hole at the center of NGC 5044. X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Bologna/F. Ubertosi; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk A Chandra X-ray image of Cygnus X-1, home to the first black hole discovered. Credit: X-rays: NASA/CXC; Optical: DSS; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss Three views of a galaxy cluster make up this image: Hubble has captured the galaxies in yellow, Chandra data reveals hot X-ray-emitting gas in blue, which has been pushed aside by jets of high-energy particles from a black hole imaged by the Very Large Array in red. This donut shape is an 800 light-year-wide disk of dust that feeds a black hole at the center of the galaxy NGC 4261. The donut is estimated to be 1.2 billion times the mass of the Sun, while the black hole’s gravity is capable of pulling in enough surrounding material to form 100,000 stars like our Sun. A Hubble Space Telescope image showing a jet of electrons and other subatomic particles driven by a hole black that travels almost at the speed of light, coming from the galaxy M87. Credit: NASA and Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) The first image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, shows light bending around the dark black hole at the center. Credit: EHT Collaboration A supermassive black hole was observed and imaged in the M87 galaxy by the Event Horizon Telescope and announced to the world in April 2019. Credit: EHT Collaboration A collection of black holes near the center of the Milky Way, just 3 light years from Sagittarius A*, captured by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Credit: NASA/CXC/Columbia Univ./C. Hailey et al. An X-ray image of the Perseus cluster showing sound waves believed to have been produced by a black hole. Credit: NASA/CXC/IoA/A.Fabian et al. J1708 triple galaxy merger. On the left is X-ray data captured by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The bright spots indicate X-rays emitted by material falling into supermassive black holes. On the right is optical data seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: X-rays: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Michigan/A. Foord et al.; Optical: SDSS and NASA/STScI The cone-shaped shadows emanating from the bright center of galaxy IC 5063 could be cast by the ring of dust surrounding the supermassive black hole at its center. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI and WP Maksym (CfA) What are your favorite images of black holes? What did we miss? Let us know by emailing us at contactus@skyatnightmagazine.com
