Scientists have used telescopes from around the world to piece together an image of the swirling mass around a black hole. It's called an event horizon. | NPR

Ever wondered what the stripes in the images of M87* actually mean? The light from M87* is slightly polarized, and these stripes reveal the direction of that polarization. Think of it like looking through a polarizing filter - similar to those in reflex cameras or 3D cinema glasses - where the image changes depending on the filter’s angle. In this animation, we explore how the polarized image of M87* varies over time when viewed through a hypothetical polarizer at different angles. Dive into the

212K views · 2.4K reactions | #OTD in 2022, the Event Horizon Telescope released a breathtaking new view of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star). Our Chandra X-ray Observatory, NuSTAR, and Swift helped keep an eye on it during the April 2017 observations: https://go.nasa.gov/4kbjxKd | NASA Universe | Facebook