is it possible to take a picture of a black hole?
336738
In that picture you are viewing the very bright hot disc of matter spiralling around the black hole. It's called an accretion disc. The black hole is actually at the centre of each disc and is invisible. The accretion discs are far enough from the black hole's influence for the light from them to be able to escape.\n\nYou can't see the black holes; you can see the influence they have on the gas around them.\n\nA previous answer claimed that it was a false-colour picture. While this may be true, bear in mind that some electromagnetic radiation MUST have been intercepted by the telescope or there would be no picture at all.\nThe above picture was probably taken in the x-ray spectrum, since the very hot accretion discs are visible.
761120
try this   http://uk.wrs.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geuljFJktF2mIBr3FLBQx.;_ylu=X3oDMTE5ZTFiZDM5BGNvbG8DZQRsA1dTMQRwb3MDMQRzZWMDc3IEdnRpZANVSzAyNTVfMjU1/SIG=123f2f7rt/EXP=1162639429/**http%3A//curious.astro.cornell.edu/blackholes.php
670484
To detect a black hole itself is not possible - what you can detect is the radiation caused by matter falling into the black hole. \n\nThrowing matter into a black hole converts matter to energy (e=mc^2) very efficiently, so when you can see point sources of hard x-rays or gamma rays in the sky with no obvious physical source this can be taken to be a black hole. \n\nThe other thing we can do is model how stars age. When all their nuclear fuel is consumed they change form. A star like our sun will convert to a red giant. If the sun were about 3 (?) times as heavy (this is known as the Chandrasekhar limit) it would collapse to form a neutron star. About 10 times as heavy and the matter inside would not be able to stop collapsing and you would end up with a black hole. We can detect this in binary stars where two stars orbit each other. If one star appears to be orbiting something we can't see we can work out how heavy it is and from that decide whether its a black hole or a neutron star.
357992
i dont believe so, from watching many episodes on nova , i understand black holes to be tinny[ in size] particles of compressed matter , so compressed as to create an astronomical gravitational force so strong that even light cannot escape. i believe most scientist believe it is a large compressed star; a star the size of our sun compressed to the area of a marble or tennis ball which because of its great gravitational force act like a celestial vacuum cleaner... its real esoteric b.s.
330240
A black hole isn't necessarily big or heavy. Any mass M which is compressed to \n\nSchwarzschild Radius: R = 2*G*M/c²\n\ngravitational constant: G = 6,6742/10^11 m³/(kg*m²)\nspeed of light: c = 2,9979*10^8 m/s\n\n\nwill collapse and form a black hole, theoretically. If you have such a thing and want to carry it around you have to isolate it from surronding matter because everything touching the event horizont R will fall into it. But that's science fiction. Rumours say that romulans use tiny black holes for their warp drives and call them quantum singularities.\n\nHawking Radiation\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation
1058041
Actually the indicative hallmark of the presence of Black Holes is X-RAYS not Gamma Rays. X-rays escape by way of the Event Horizon created by the accretion discs of matter created between the Black Hole and the Star it is sucking in. Example CYGNUS X-1 AND HDE 226868  in the Constellation of Cygnus the Swan visible from March until September every year. In 1975 the Satellite UHURU found this the first of many Black Holes to come because of the surge in X-rays. Hence if you want to see a photo of a Black Hole source in this galaxy or any other you must photograph it with an X-ray filter. Gamma Rays and X-rays actually vibrate at a Higher Octave than Light which is why these things seem to escape from Black Holes they are not really escaping they are the product of the Star getting sucked in it creates intense Luminosity and heat the result causes energy outbursts 10s of 1000s times brighter than Our Sun.Light as we know it only exists between 400 and 700 nanometers. A small part of a bigger whole called the Electromagnetic Spectrum.
724210
something like what we call a "black hole"
636436
As much as Sci-Fi wants it to be something exotic, I'm afraid there is no "other side" to a black hole.\n\nImagine an atom of normal matter. Most of it is empty space. But it takes a great deal of pressure to compress it --- more pressure than is usually available. But if we concnetrate enough mass, the gravitational force will be strong enough that the space can be compressed. Protons (positive charge) and electrons (negative charge) will be pressed together to form neutrons (neutral charge). This happens in the core of very large stars at the end of their life. Their last stage of fusion produced iron at the core. When enough iron exist at the core, it suddenly collapses as I've described here. It then forms what is called a neutron star. If it is oriented just right with respect to the earth, it also appears as a pulsar (Internet search: pulsar +star +radio).\n\nThe neutron star is extremely dense. But there is still a force exerted by the neutrons which keeps the compression from going any further. But what if the mass was large enough to overcome that force and squeeze it even smaller. It appears that once this happens, there is nothing left to stop the compression and it continues until the object takes up no space at all, which is why it is sometimes called a singularity. It is a point in space with a huge mass and therefore extremely strong gravity.\n\nAll objects exert a gravitational pull on other objects. And therefore all distort space and bend the path that light takes. But this new object is so compressed that near it, the gravity is so strong that the path of light beams are looped back and cannot leave the object. Since no light can escape from it and anything nearby falls into it and disappears, it is called a black hole.\n\nMoving out from the black hole, we finally find a distance where light can barely escape. The line that divides where light can and cannot escape from the black hole is called the event horizon. It is not a "surface" of the black hole as there is nothing there. It is merely the distance at which the gravity drops enough that light can escape. If you could build a camera and drop it though the event horizon, nothing would change as it went through. No difference would be recorded. However the radio transmission from the camera would cease as radio is the same as light, just a different frequency. Once the camera went past the event horizon, it would no longer be able to transmit the pictures to you. The radio waves would loop back and head into the black hole. There are also some strange things that happen to time as you cross the even horizon, but you can run an Internet search to find out more.\n\nBecause it has compressed to the point of not taking up space, conventional physics expressions for matter no longer make sense in this environment. You end up with fractions where the volume or distance is in the denominator (lower half of the fraction) and therefore the fraction has an infinite value --- which doesn't make sense. So we can't really project what is going on inside. But the idea that it is a portal to other dimensions is more SciFi than science. There are some esoteric theories that guess about such things, but they are guesses. \n\nHope this helps\n\nIf you are interested in astronomy, try \nhttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/lunar-observing/\n\nChuck
989306
A very good question but one that we don't know the answer to yet.  It is a hypothetical situation that could create a wormhole or perhaps the center of a blackhole is where this kind of phenomenon occurs.  The bottom line is that there is no hard evidence of this but it seems possible according to mathematical models.
24829
Although black holes are not directly detectable, there is much indirect evidence of their existance such as the movement of other objects.\n\nGravity is not a simple phenomenon and cannot "escape" from anything. It is a property of space-time itself.
697469
it can be. Because blackhole has a much faster velocity than light. It is possible that we can use blackhole to travel into another galaxy or another space that we haven't know before. Or maybe we can use blackhole as a time machine. Everything can happen, one day we can find it out. I believe that
1136303
A black hole is not actually a hole, but a physical object in space, consisting of ultra compact particals, contained in such a small area that thier gravitational pull is much stronger than any other celestial body of comperable size....  Basically you put all the matter and gravitational pull from a large star into the volume of a small moon... particles captured by a black hole are crushed and added to its composition. This in theory includes photons (light and other energy)as well.  As for whether black holes are hoax's or not.. the answer is no... we can see their effects on star near them, including gases that are syphoned, and other gravitational interactions.  Additionally when matter approaches a black hole and is accellerated, it reaches an energy level at the even horizon where xrays are emited, but not captured, which in turn we can also detect.  Though there is much we do not know about them, they definately exist, and most likely in much greater numbers than we oringinally thought.
1141479
The ISS doesn't take very spectacular photos, that's done by specialised satellites.\n\nThe easiest way to get a good view of anywhere is by downloading and running Google Earth...
280455
It is an interesting idea, but for the moment, only an idea. The cosmology behind black holes is pretty sound, and they have been observed now, such as in Cygnus x-1.
49210
Black Holes are strongly suspected to be responsible for a few powerful X-ray stars, and also to be at the center of most Galaxies - including ours.\n\nBut, while these are all much to far away for us to get to now - probably ever. You can see what the trip would be like with the Virtual Trips to Black Holes and Neutron Stars web page:\nhttp://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/htmltest/rjn_bht.html\nand with the animations on the Falling into a Black Hole page:\nhttp://casa.colorado.edu/~ajsh/schw.shtml
273528
The defining factor of a black hole is that the escape velocity is higher than the speed of light.  This is a function of density and not total mass.  It's possible to have very small black holes.  They can even have masses smaller than that of an atom.  The LHC at CERN, which is expected to come online in 2007, may be capable of producing such microsingularities.  \n\nAs for our universe being a black hole...  from inside it's certainly not.  But, from "outside", if you can define such a thing, maybe it does appear as such, since light cannot escape out universe.  This assumes, however, that there is an outside from which this can be considered, and there's no proof, and perhaps no way to prove, whether or not there is.
1185180
Images like that aren't available except to the NSA/CIA + the companies who run the commercial satelites who can sell you the images for a fee: http://www.spaceimaging.com/gallery/