According to Einstein, all galaxies have a giant black hole at their centre, including ours.

However, the nature of black holes themselves - places where light and matter cannot escape - makes them extremely difficult to photograph. Therefore, it has not been until this week that scientists have been able to confirm the existence of a supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, and take a picture of it.

The team of astronomers, which was part of the global Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, used observations from a worldwide network of eight radio telescopes on our planet – collectively forming a single, Earth-sized virtual telescope – to take the stunning image.

Until now, scientists strongly suspected the existence of this black hole, as they observed stars orbiting around something invisible, compact, and very massive at the centre of the Milky Way. However, any previous efforts to capture the supposed black hole found it too...