The groundwork for that first experiment was put in place 12 years before it happened. Marrone said the project started to gain steam in 2010, after several grants allowed the EHT team to make necessary improvements on several telescopes.

UA Astronomy Professor Feryal Ozel is a lead researcher for one of the modeling and analysis working groups that interprets the data from the EHT and is also on the EHT science council.

She said the research could have a big impact on the way people understand black holes.

“It’s a new and novel way of studying black holes that has not been possible before through direct imaging. It allows us to access information on spatial scale that has not been accessible before,” Ozel said.

One goal of the EHT is to test Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which Ozel said suggests gravity comes from objects bending space and time.

“It’s Einstein’s geometrical description that all objects bend the space and time around them, and that black holes are these extreme objects that warp space time in a way that doesn’t allow matter or even light to escape from the innermost regions,” Ozel said.