Zooming-in to the heart of M87 to see a new view of its black hole

This zoom video starts with a view of ALMA, a telescope in which ESO is a partner and that is part of the Event Horizon Telescope, and zooms-in on the heart of M87, showing successively more detailed observations. At the end of the video, we see the first ever image of a black hole — first released in 2019 — followed by a new image released in 2021: how this supermassive object looks in polarised light. This is the first time astronomers have been able to measure polarisation, a signature of magnetic fields, this close to the edge of a black hole.