Astronomers released the first photograph of the supermassive black hole at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy, which is murky and indistinct. The black hole, known as Sagittarius A* or Sgr A*, is just the second black hole ever photographed.
The National Science Foundation of the United States shared the picture on Twitter and added, ‘Our own black hole! Astronomers have just revealed the 1st image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy using the Event Horizon ‘Scope – a planet-scale array of radio telescopes that emerged from decades of NSF support’.
Our own black hole! Astronomers have just revealed the 1st image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy using the @ehtelescope– a planet-scale array of radio telescopes that emerged from decades of NSF support. https://t.co/bC1PZH4yD6 #ourblackhole pic.twitter.com/pd96CH3V0m
— National Science Foundation (@NSF) May 12, 2022
While announcing the new image, Feryal Ozel of the University of Arizona termed the black hole ‘the gentle giant in the center of our galaxy’.
Sagittarius A(asterisk) is the name of the Milky Way black hole, which is located near the constellations of Sagittarius and Scorpius. Its mass is 4 million times that of our sun.
This isn’t the first photograph of a black hole. The first one, from a galaxy 53 million light-years away, was disclosed by the same organisation in 2019. The black hole in the Milky Way is significantly closer, at around 27,000 light-years. 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometres) is the length of a light year.
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