The First Photograph of a Planet Orbiting a Binary White Dwarf-Black Hole System (1995)
This 1995 photograph is the first of its kind, capturing a planet orbiting a binary white dwarf-black hole system. The photograph was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and shows the planet, designated WD 1145+017, orbiting two white dwarf stars and a black hole. The white dwarf stars
A black hole is an astronomical body so compact that its gravity prevents anything, including light, from escaping. Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, which describes gravitation as the curvature of spacetime, predicts that any sufficiently compact mass will form a black hole. The boundary of no escape is called the event horizon. In general relativity, crossing a black hole's event horizon traps an object inside but produces no locally detectable change. General relativity also predicts that every black hole should have a central singularity, where the curvature of spacetime is infinite.