Black Hole Sun

If you've been on the internet at all this week, you've seen the first real image of a black hole, and maybe even read about Katie Bouman, or listened to her TED talk. (Seriously though, if you haven't... read about it here.)

If you've been on the homepage of riverreporter.com this week, you've already seen what I was up to with my camera.

The hardest part of taking a great photo is hiding it. (I'm sure Katie was so excited about her photo, it killed her to wait until the official release!)

Of course, the homepage isn't the first place I posted my photo. I had it up on my personal Facebook, my Instagram accounts... heck, I even sent it off on Snapchat to my story. It must have killed Katie to keep her photo until yesterday.

Why is it that when there's a great photo, it screams to be posted—to get noticed? Even if it's not a ground-breaking, earth-shattering revelation.

My first thought when I saw the photo of the black hole was... Eye of Sauron. I said it aloud in the office, and pretty soon my co-workers were tagging me in memes on Facebook saying the exact same thing.

And then there were the memes on Reddit and finally there were meme round-ups.

And the jokes were great too... If you aren't impressed with the picture of the black hole... you don't understand the gravity of the situation..... I keep reading nothing but black hole articles; they keep pulling me in.

And if you keep going down the internet rabbit hole—err, black hole(?)—you'll end up with one of my favorite early '90s songs, "Black Hole Sun."

It's funny how the graphics that wowed us in the '90s look really cheesey now. Some people are cutting down the photo, saying the blurry quality makes it worthless. The fact that its M87 lies about 55 million light-years from Earth should make people pause and realize how amazing it really is that we could get anything at all. Considering one light year is 5.879e+12  miles (That's 5,878,499,810,000 miles, or nearly six trillion miles). The EHT (Event Horizon Telecope) that captured the images is made up of eight different observatories. Capturing it took nearly two years, and more coding and hard drives than any normal person could fathom... yet, there's still people who scoff.

 There's others who (like me) are stunned with the photo, even if it isn't as crisp as my sunset images. 

That's why the internet is such an interesting place. From a sunset, to a black hole and back, there's always something you can bounce to. 

If you run through the links I've posted above, you'll find a treasure trove of more information on everything I've been rambling on about. Even the jokes.