The First Photograph of a Planet Orbiting a Binary Pulsar-Black Hole System (1995)
This 1995 photograph is the first ever image of a planet orbiting a binary pulsar-black hole system. It was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and is a remarkable achievement in astronomy. The image shows a planet, designated PSR B1257+12 A, orbiting the binary pulsar
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.