M87 Black Hole Size Comparison
M87 Black Hole Size Comparison
[Caption above the panel:] Size comparison: The M87 Black Hole and Our Solar System
[Caption at top left of the panel:] EHT Black Hole Image Source: NSF
[An image of the M87 black hole captured by the event horizon telescope on the day that this comic was published is shown, in the shape of a thick red-and-yellow ring on a black background.]
[A white ring about 1/4 of the diameter of the central black portion of the image is labelled with an arrow:] Pluto
[A small white circle at the center of the image is labelled with an arrow:] Sun
[A small white dot on the right hand edge of the central black portion of the image is labelled with an arrow:] Voyager 1

This comic shows the picture of the M87 black hole by the Event Horizon Telescope that was published on the same day as this comic. Overlaid on the picture is a scale image of the Solar System, showing the Sun, Pluto (one of the most well-known dwarf planets ) and its orbital path, and Voyager 1 , a deep-space probe and the current farthest probe from Earth. The comic is quite similar to 1551: Pluto , in which Randall overlaid annotations onto the recently-released first images of Pluto taken by the New Horizons spacecraft.
The point of the comic is to celebrate the release of this image by the Event Horizon Telescope, referenced two comics earlier, in 2133: EHT Black Hole Picture , as well as to indicate the hugeness of M87 and the awe-inspiring thing that space is.  This image has been widely publicized as being the first image ever of a black hole.  Science had no visual evidence of black holes at all until 2012 .
In the title text Randall hypothesizes that if the Sun were at the center of M87, Voyager would be outside the event horizon. This is confirmed by a 2015 study in which the Schwartzchild radius of M87* was found to be 5.9x10^-4 pc, as opposed to the distance of 7.04x10^-4 pc, at the time the comic was written, between Voyager 1 and the Sun.
The comic's scale seems to be slightly small; while the orbit of Pluto should be about 4.9 microarcseconds across, in the comic it's about 3.9 microarcseconds across.
[Caption above the panel:] Size comparison: The M87 Black Hole and Our Solar System
[Caption at top left of the panel:] EHT Black Hole Image Source: NSF
[An image of the M87 black hole captured by the event horizon telescope on the day that this comic was published is shown, in the shape of a thick red-and-yellow ring on a black background.]
[A white ring about 1/4 of the diameter of the central black portion of the image is labelled with an arrow:] Pluto
[A small white circle at the center of the image is labelled with an arrow:] Sun
[A small white dot on the right hand edge of the central black portion of the image is labelled with an arrow:] Voyager 1
