It is almost a hundred years since scientists got the first suspicion:
There is something huge, in the middle of our galaxy.
Telescopes had captured radio waves from the foggy center of the Milky Way. But what was in there?
The research of recent decades has provided powerful hints.
Studies have shown, for example, that many other galaxies have a supermassive black hole in the center. And measurements of the movements of stars near the center of the Milky Way have confirmed that our galaxy also has a massive object in its heart.
As far as we know today, no phenomenon other than a black hole can accumulate so much mass in such a small area.
Many have thus assumed that the object, which has been named Sagittarius A *, must be a solid black hole.
But no one has seen it directly. For now.
Breakthrough
Today, the international research project Event Horizon Telescope Project presented what they have dreamed of and worked for for years:
The very first image of Sagittarius A * – the supermassive black hole located in the middle of the Milky Way, 27,000 light-years away.
Håkon Dahle is an astrophysicist and guest researcher at the Department of Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Oslo. He followed the press conference on Thursday and describes the new results as a breakthrough.
– It is really the first time we see a picture of the black hole in our own galaxy, he says to forskning.no.
Sagittarius A * is 27,000 light-years from Earth. Taking a picture of it from here is equivalent to photographing a donut lying on the moon, the researchers say. In addition, the Sagittarius A * lies behind a veil of gas and dust. (Video: ESO / L. Calçada, N. Risinger (skysurvey.org), DSS, VISTA, VVV Survey / D. Minniti DSS, Nogueras-Lara et al. Schoedel, NACO, GRAVITY Collaboration, EHT Collaboration (Music: Azul Cobalto ))
Spinning black hole
The picture tells the researchers a lot.
It shows that the black hole has a mass that is four million times larger than our own sun. In relation to the enormous mass, Sagittarius A * is still not that large in extent. The radius is rough
–
