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WASHINGTON (AP) — Earth saw the first wild but blurry image of a supermassive black hole at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy on Thursday.
Astronomers believe that at the center of nearly all galaxies, including our own, are these giant black holes from which light and matter cannot escape, making them extremely difficult to obtain images of. Light is bent and twisted chaotically by gravity as it is pulled into the abyss along with superheated gas and dust.
The colorized image, released Thursday, is from the international consortium behind the Event Horizon Telescope, which consists of eight synchronized radio telescopes around the world. Previous efforts had found the black hole at the center of our galaxy too tense to get a good picture.
Feryal Özel from the University of Arizona called the black hole “the gentle giant at the center of the galaxy” when announcing its new image.
The Milky Way black hole is called Sagittarius A (star), which is near the border of the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpio. It is 4 million times larger than our sun.
This isn’t the first black hole image. The same group published the first in 2019, and it was from a galaxy 53 million light-years away. The Milky Way black hole is much closer, about 27,000 light-years away. A light-year is 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers).
The project cost about $60 million, of which $28 million came from the US National Science Foundation.
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The Associated Press Department of Health and Science has support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. Only AP is responsible for all content.
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