Astronomers, including Harvard University researchers, have captured the first image of the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole.

On Thursday, the world took a look at the first wild but mysterious image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way. Astronomers believe that nearly all galaxies, including our own, have these giant black holes at their center, where light exists and matter cannot escape. Which makes it very difficult to get pictures of her. The light bends and twists chaotically due to gravity as it is sucked into the abyss along with the protected gas and dust. The color image unveiled Thursday is from the international consortium behind the Event Horizon Telescope, a group of eight synchronized radio telescopes around the world. Previous efforts had found the black hole at the center of our galaxy to be too fast to get a good image, and Ferial Ozil of the University of Arizona described the black hole as the “gentle giant at the center of our galaxy” while announcing the new image. The method of the black hole is called Sagittarius A (star), near the border of the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpio. It’s 4 million times larger than our sun, and this isn’t the first photo of a black hole. The same group released the first set in 2019 and it was from a galaxy 53 million light-years away. The Milky Way’s black hole is much closer, about 27,000 light-years away. With a light-year area of ​​5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km), the project cost nearly $60 million with $28 million from the US National Science Foundation.

Prunella Stephenson

“Web maven. Infuriatingly humble beer geek. Bacon fanatic. Typical creator. Music expert.”