A historic announcement was made on Wednesday when the first ever images of a black hole were released.

The images were released by Event Horizon Telescope, an international project involving telescopes across the globe that describes itself as a “virtual Earth-sized telescope.” They managed to find the black hole that was photographed in galaxy Messier 87 (M87), which is 55 million light years away.

You’re looking at the first ever image of a black hole. It was captured by the #NSFFunded @ehtelescope project. #ehtblackhole #RealBlackHole https://t.co/6dglvqrvOs pic.twitter.com/0hclANf4tc

— National Science Foundation (@NSF) April 10, 2019

“We’re delighted to report to you today that we have seen what we thought was unseeable,” explained Dr. Shep Doeleman, director of the Event Horizon Telescope. “We have taken advantage of a cosmic opportunity.”

“This was a Herculean task,” said National Science Foundation Director Dr. France Cordova, adding that these findings will transform and enhance our understanding of black holes.

Researchers say that this black hole has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the sun, and that the image shows the ring-like structure with a dark central region, which is the black hole’s “shadow.”

In a historic feat by @EHTelescope & @NSF, a black hole image has been captured for the 1st time. Several of our missions observed the same black hole using different light wavelengths and collected data to understand the black hole’s environment. Details: https://t.co/WOjLdY76ve pic.twitter.com/4PhH1bfHxc

— NASA (@NASA) April 10, 2019

“”If immersed in a bright region, like a disc of glowing gas, we expect a black hole to create a dark region similar to a shadow — something predicted by Einstein’s general relativity that we’ve never seen before,” said Heino Falcke of Holland’s Radboud University and chair of the EHT Science Council, in a statement. “This shadow, caused by the gravitational bending and capture of light by the event horizon, reveals a lot about the nature of these fascinating objects and allowed us to measure the enormous mass of M87’s black hole.”

“Black holes are extremely dense pockets of matter, objects of such incredible mass and miniscule volume that they drastically warp the fabric of space-time,” said the National Science Foundation. “Anything that passes too close, from a wandering star to a photon of light, gets captured. Most black holes are the condensed remnants of a massive star, the collapsed core that remains following an explosive supernova.”

Find out more about this amazing find in the video below!