On Wednesday, the Event Horizon Telescope team released a long-awaited photo of the ultramassive black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy. Here are a few things to know: M87 is 55 million light years away,
so our new black hole photo is really only new to us. That light left the area around the black hole just shortly before the dinosaurs vanished.
This ultramassive black hole is also called ultramassive for a reason, mainly being equivalent to 6.5 billion of our Suns. What's more, the black hole is actually dormant. It has sucked up so much material from its home galaxy that it can’t take in any more, so it’s just sort of sitting there quietly, the way you might after a particularly filling meal.