Doom Spiral

Gas falling into the supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy M87 is guided by lines of magnetic force, which form a spiral in this image from the Event Horizon Telescope. The magnetic field captures some of the gas and fires it back into space as "jets" traveling at close to the speed of light. This image shows the shadow of the black hole, which is about 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun, against the glow of material around the black hole. M87 is a giant elliptical galaxy about 55 million light-years from Earth. The Event Horizon Telescope combines the observations from eight telescopes around the world to produce especially sharp images. [EHT Collaboration]