When was the first direct observation of a black hole released?

On 10 April 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration released the first direct image of a black hole, located in the galaxy M87. The orange ring shows hot gas around the black hole’s event horizon, not the black hole itself. The object is about 55 million light-years away and has a mass billions of times that of the Sun. This was a major milestone in astronomy and a dramatic test of general relativity in extreme conditions.