Black hole given Hawaiian name

A language professor has given a Hawaiian name - Powehi - to the black hole depicted in an image produced in a landmark experiment.

University of Hawaiihilo Hawaiian Professor Larry Kimura named the cosmic object. The world’s first image of a black hole was created using data from eight radio telescopes around the world.

Powehi means “the adorned fathomless dark creation” or “embellished dark source of unending creation” and comes from the Kumulipo, an 18th century Hawaiian creation chant. A Hawaiian name was justified because the project included two Hawaii telescopes, astronomers said.

Jessica Dempsey, deputy director of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope on Mauna Kea, was among 200 scientists who worked to capture an image of the massive black hole in the M87 galaxy nearly 54 million light-years from Earth and said Powehi was an excellent match for the scientific explanation provided to Kimura.