Black holes have previously been unviewable by humans, but on Wednesday, a group of 200 scientists shared the first picture ever taken of a black hole, which is 55 million light years away from Earth.

"Any black hole images you may have seen up to now are really just artist conceptions based on information from scientists, so this is huge. It basically opens up a whole new area of science for us to start to investigate," said Drew Deskur, Kopernik Observatory & Science Center executive director.

The photo was captured using eight telescopes around the world, which were synced to capture photos at the same time. They were set up in locations ranging from Antarctica to Chile.

"By pulling all that data across the globe, it basically made it look like we had a telescope that was the size and diameter of the earth, and that is what ultimately allowed us to put all of that data together," said Deskur.

One of the leading scientists in this discovery is 29-year-old MIT student Katie Bouman. She helped develop the algorithm that scanned the black hole over a period of ten days. It measures a whopping 40 billion kilometers, or three million times the size of the earth, across.

"It's giving us a way to validate some of the work that previous scientists have done and this will now spur future investigations that who knows where it will take us," said Deskur.

New discoveries like these prove to be educational opportunities for observatories like Kopernik, which receives students by the bus load, seemingly on a daily basis.

"It shows the kids that come here to Kopernik, continue to study and follow your dreams. Ultimately, you can come up with some pretty neat things," said Deskur.