Illustration of the M87 black hole and its accretion engine seen from a nearby planet. M87's central black hole was famously imaged in 2019 by a team of astronomers using the Event Horizon Telescope. It was the first ever directly captured image of a black hole's accretion disc. Although the accretion disc is exceedingly hot, it is nearly invisible in the optical part of the spectrum because most of its luminosity is in the X-ray region of the spectrum. The jets of charged particles, however, moving at a sizable fraction of the speed of light, are clearly visible. Also visible is the ring of stars around the edge of the accretion disc (red), which have been gravitationally lensed.