This is the moment a black hole is pictured blasting a giant jet stream for the first time.
The new photo shows the supermassive black hole that's at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy.
The image captures the precise moment the base of the astrophysical jet, which is moving at nearly the speed of light, connects to matter swirling around the hole before being sucked into the surface.
The process, called accretion, has never been pictured until now.
The image was captured thanks to a study by an international team of scientists led by Dr LU Rusen from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The image from the study, published on April 26, underlines for the first time the connection between the accretion flow near the central supermassive black hole and the origin of the jet.
"Previously, we had seen both the black hole and the jet in separate images, but now we have taken a panoramic picture of the black hole together with its jet at a new wavelength," said Dr LU.
The ring that was seen before was becoming larger and thicker at the 3.5mm observing wavelength.
He said: "This shows that the material falling into the black hole produces additional emission that is now observed in the new image.
"This gives us a more complete view of the physical processes acting near the black hole."
The images were captured thanks to the technology of the Global Millimeter VLBI Array (GMVA), Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Greenland Telescope (GLT).
Thomas Krichbaum of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, said: "With the greatly improved imaging capabilities by adding ALMA and GLT into GMVA observations, we have gained a new perspective.
"We do indeed see the triple-ridged jet that we knew about from earlier VLBI observations.
"But now we can see how the jet emerges from the emission ring around the central supermassive black hole and we can measure the ring diameter also at another (longer) wavelength."
Kazuhiro Hada from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan noted that the team also found something "surprising" in their data.
Hada said: "The radiation from the inner region close to the black hole is broader than we expected.
"This could mean that there is more than just gas falling in.
"There could also be a wind blowing out, causing turbulence and chaos around the black hole."
