An international astronomy team released the first image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy on Thursday, a quiet giant at the heart of the Milky Way.
“What we see is the heart of the black hole, the point of no return,” said National Science Foundation chief operating officer Karen Marrongelle, who introduced the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration result. The find directly confirms the long-held suspicion that a black hole sits at the center of our galaxy and likely at most others.
Called Sagittarius A*, the black hole weighs 4 million times more than the sun. It is surrounded by a heated plasma trillions of degrees in temperature, a donut-shaped halo surrounding its dark “event horizon” that reveals its presence. It sits about 28,500 light-years away (one light-year is about 5.9 trillion miles) in the constellation Sagittarius.
“This is the black hole at the center of our galaxy. That’s pretty amazing,” said Caltech’s Katherine Bouman, a member of the consortium. “What’s more cool than seeing the black hole at the center of our galaxy?”
