What is First Image Of Black Hole?

It is the April 2019 photograph of the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy M87, captured by the Event Horizon Telescope and quickly turned into a Reddit exploitable.

Where did First Image Of Black Hole come from?

The National Science Foundation and the EHT Collaboration released the image via press conferences on April 10th, 2019, after years of observations by eight linked radio telescopes.

What does First Image Of Black Hole mean?

The picture is the first direct visual evidence that black holes exist, showing a bright ring of superheated gas around the event horizon of an object 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun.

How do you use First Image Of Black Hole?

People typically edit the glowing ring into a pizza, donut or cartoon eye, or pair the untouched image with reaction templates like Surprised Pikachu.

Is First Image Of Black Hole still popular?

The image is a classic 2019 exploitable that saw its heaviest activity in the days after release, when r/photoshopbattles, r/pics and r/dankmemes threads pulled hundreds of thousands of upvotes.

First Image Of Black Hole

2019exploitable imageclassic

Published August 20, 2026

First Image Of Black Hole refers to the historic photograph of the supermassive black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy, unveiled by the National Science Foundation on April 10th, 2019. The image was quickly turned into an exploitable template, with Redditors overlaying pop culture references onto the glowing orange ring within hours of its release.

viral photo memes exploitable templates photoshop memes subreddit origin memes 2019 memes

Overview

First Image Of Black Hole is the fuzzy orange ring photograph capturing the supermassive black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy, released by the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration on April 10th, 20191. The picture shows a bright halo of superheated gas circling a perfectly circular dark shadow, matching what theoretical physicists had predicted for decades3. Because the visual is so simple and iconic, edit-happy Redditors immediately recognized it as prime exploitable material.

The subject itself sits 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun, making the event horizon roughly three times wider than Pluto's orbit around our own star2. Online, though, the image is less about astrophysics than about the joke potential of a glowing donut shape, which people paired with everything from Surprised Pikachu to Minecraft screenshots5.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Press release (source) / Reddit (viral spread)

Creator

Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration

Date

2019

On April 10th, 2019, the National Science Foundation held seven simultaneous press conferences worldwide to announce the first direct visual evidence of a black hole, captured by the Event Horizon Telescope, a globe-spanning network of eight radio observatories2. Sheperd Doeleman, director of the EHT Collaboration, said the team of more than 200 researchers had "seen what we thought was unseeable"2.

The NSF posted the image on Twitter the same day, and the tweet pulled in over 29,700 retweets and 53,400 likes inside the first 12 hours5. Major outlets including ABC News, CNN and BBC ran the picture across their homepages within minutes of the embargo lifting3.

How It Spread

Within hours of the press release, Redditor Dragonjazz posted a Surprised Pikachu mashup of the black hole that pulled over 33,600 upvotes in four hours5. Redditor GrumpyWendigo dropped the raw image into r/photoshopbattles the same day, where commenters churned out edits ranging from the Eye of Sauron to fried eggs5.

Attention quickly shifted to Dr. Katie Bouman, a computer scientist on the EHT team whose photo was shared on r/pics by user iKojan and gathered upwards of 195,800 points and 6,200 comments within 48 hours5. A backlash followed, with a post on r/unpopularopinion arguing Bouman was overcredited because programmers Andrew Chael and Michael Johnson had contributed more GitHub commits5. Chael, the primary developer of the eht-imaging library, posted a Twitter thread on April 11th condemning the "sexist attacks" on his colleague4.

On April 12th, Redditor DankMemesKing777 uploaded an edit of Bouman's laptop screen showing Minecraft instead of the black hole rendering to r/dankmemes, where it hit over 54,200 points and 560 comments5. That same day, The Washington Post published a piece titled "Trolls hijacked a scientist's image to attack Katie Bouman. They picked the wrong astrophysicist"5.

How to Use This Meme

The exploitable format typically involves swapping the black hole itself for another circular object, such as a pizza, a donut, or a cartoon eye, while keeping the surrounding glow intact. A common convention is to pair the untouched image with a reaction template like Surprised Pikachu, letting the joke rely on the character's stunned expression at the cosmic reveal5. Edits also often replace what appears on Katie Bouman's monitor in her viral reaction photo with unrelated content like video games or memes.