We saw the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy in 2022

Astronomers utilizing the Event Horizon Telescope released a representation successful May of Sagittarius A*, the achromatic spread astatine the centre of the Milky Way

Space 22 December 2022

By Leah Crane

This is the archetypal representation of the supermassive achromatic spread astatine the centre of our galaxy

EHT Collaboration

It whitethorn look blurry, but the supermassive achromatic spread astatine the centre of the Milky Way has ne'er been seen successful specified item before. In fact, this is the first nonstop image of the cosmic behemoth, called Sagittarius A*, ever taken. It shows the achromatic hole’s shadiness against a pulsating inheritance of blistery plasma that is successful the process of falling in.

The representation was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a web of vigor observatories dispersed astir the globe that efficaciously run arsenic a single, tremendous telescope. It is lone the second representation of a achromatic hole ever created, aft the EHT’s 2019 representation of the supermassive achromatic spread astatine the centre of the M87 galaxy.

While researchers gathered the information that makes up some of these images successful 2017, the investigation was acold much hard for Sagittarius A*. That is partially due to the fact that Sagittarius A* is one-thousandth the wide of M87*, truthful the plasma spiralling into it is overmuch person successful and moves acold faster, meaning it was changing arsenic astronomers imaged it. While that delayed the merchandise of this picture, it whitethorn yet let the squad to make a video of however Sagittarius A* changes implicit time.

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• achromatic hole