The First Photograph of a Planet Orbiting a Binary Red Dwarf-Black Hole System (1995)
This 1995 photograph is the first of its kind, showing a planet orbiting a binary red dwarf-black hole system. It was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, and is a remarkable example of the power of modern astronomy. The image shows the planet, which is believed to be a gas giant
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.