This is the second one to be photographed. The first was in 2019 in the galaxy Messier 87.
Scientists today revealed the first image of a black hole called Sagittarius A* – or SgrA* – at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. This is only the second one to be photographed. The first was in 2019 in the galaxy Messier 87.
This feat was achieved by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), which in 2019 also discovered
first photo the first black hole.
Sagittarius A* has a mass 4 million times that of our Sun and is located about 26,000 light-years – the distance light travels in a year – from Earth.
Black holes are extremely dense objects with such strong gravity that not even light can escape them. When reaching a black hole, its point – stars, planets, gas, dust and all forms of electromagnetic radiation – are swept away and disappear.
The scientists of the project were looking for a ring of light – superheated matter that circulates at high speed at the edge of the horizon – at the behest of the zone of darkness, which is a real black hole. This is known as the shadow or silhouette of a black hole.
The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy of which the solar system is a part. Seen from above or below, it resembles a rotating weather vane with the sun in one of the spiral arms and Sagittarius A* in the center.
A 2019 image of a supermassive black hole in a galaxy called Messier 87 or M87 shows a glowing red, yellow and white ring around its dark center. Black hole M87 is much further and more massive than Sagittarius A*, located about 54 million light-years from Earth.
The scientists noted that Sagittarius A*, despite being much closer to our solar system than M87, is harder to visualize.
The diameter of Sagittarius A* is about 17 times that of the Sun, which means that it is within the solar orbit of the planet Mercury. In contrast, M87’s diameter spans our entire solar system.
“Sagittarius A* is more than a thousand times less massive than the black hole in M87, but because it’s in our own galaxy, it’s much closer and should look a little bigger in the sky,” said EHT astronomer Lindy Blackburn. .
“However, the smaller size of the Sgr A* also means that it is about a thousand times faster than the M87.
