The first-ever chronicled black hole gets Hawaiian moniker

The newly chronicled black hole has been given a moniker by a language professor. The black hole is named 'Powehi' which means "the adorned fathomless dark creation" or "embellished dark source of unending creation."

University of Hawaii-Hilo Hawaiian Professor Larry Kimura came up with the name for the black hole, reports The Honolulu Star-Advertiser. The name comes from Kumulipo, an 18th-century Hawaiian creation chant.

The first-ever image of a black hole was released on Wednesday and was created using the data acquired from eight radio telescopes across the globe.

"To have the privilege of giving a Hawaiian name to the very first scientific confirmation of a black hole is very meaningful to me and my Hawaiian lineage that comes from po," Kimura said in a news release.

There were two Hawaiian telescopes were involved in the process, so the name was justified, astronomers said. "As soon as he said it, I nearly fell off my chair," said Jessica Dempsey, deputy director of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope on Mauna Kea.

Dempsey was one of the 200 scientists who worked together to achieve the extraordinary feat of capturing a black hole. The supermassive black hole was in the center of the M87 galaxy which is 54 million light-years away from our planet.

"We described what we had seen and that this black hole was illuminating and brightening the darkness around it, and that's when he came up with the name," she said.

The image shows a dark region in the center which is encapsulated by a ring of light that looks brighter on one side. The Messier 87 or M87 galaxy which is near the Virgo galaxy cluster. The 'Powehi' has a mass that is 6.5 billion times than our Sun.