The very first direct image of the dusty ring of a black hole around a black hole is taken

Astronomers took the very first direct image of a dusty donut revolving around a supermassive black hole.

The ring, called torus, was imagined around the black hole in the center of Cygnus A, one of the most powerful radio galaxies in the universe.

Most galaxies have a black hole in the center that draws debris into their orbit, which then rotates around the center in a disk.

Part of this material falls into the black hole, feeding the vast black hole and pushing it to throw large plasma jets.

Direct images were impossible until now because of the incredible gravity of black holes sucking everything, even light.

Astronomers took the very first direct image of a dusty donut swirling around a supermassive black hole (artist impression on the photo). The ring, called torus, was imagined around the nucleus of Cygnus A, one of the most powerful radio galaxies in the universe.

Cygnus A is about 800 million light-years away and is one of the brightest radio sources in the sky.

The black hole in the center of this galaxy has a mass of about 2.5 billion suns.

Images of ultra-luminous emissions have been provided by astronomers using the Very Large Array (VLA) telescope.

The image contributes to a growing school of thought that claims that these dust-riddled black holes, collectively known as Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), form the center of extremely powerful galaxies.

"The torus is an essential part of the AGN phenomenon, and there is evidence of the low luminosity of such structures in the neighboring AGN, but we have never seen it directly in such a brilliant radio galaxy", said Chris Carilli of the National. Radioastronomy Observatory (NRAO).

VLA observations reveal the presence of gas in the torus around the enormous black hole of Cygnus A (photo). Cygnus A is about 800 million light-years away and is one of the brightest radio sources in the sky.

"The torus helps to explain why objects known by different names are actually the same thing, viewed from a different angle."

VLA observations reveal the presence of gas in the torus around the enormous black hole of Cygnus A.

"Cygnus A is the closest example of a powerful radio-transmitting galaxy, 10 times closer than any other with a radio broadcast of comparable power," said Rick Perley of NRAO .

"This proximity allowed us to find the torus in a high resolution VLA image of the heart of the galaxy.

WHAT ARE BLACK HOLES?

Black holes are so dense and their gravitational force is so strong that no form of radiation can escape them, not even light.

They act as intense sources of gravity that suck dust and gases around them.

Their intense gravitational attraction is thought to be what stars of galaxies gravitate around.

How they are trained is still poorly understood.

Supermassive black holes are incredibly dense areas in the center of galaxies with masses that can be billions of times greater than those of the sun. They cause hollows in space-time (artist's impression) and even light can not escape their gravitational appeal.

Astronomers believe that they can form when a large cloud of gas up to 100,000 times larger than the sun collapses into a black hole.

Many of these black hole seeds merge to form much larger supermassive black holes, which are at the center of all known massive galaxies.

Alternatively, a supermassive black hole seed can come from a giant star, about 100 times the mass of the sun, which eventually forms a black hole after a fuel breakdown and a collapse.

When these giant stars die, they also surrender in "supernova", a huge explosion that expels matter from outer layers of the star into deep space.