GARCHING BEI München, Germany – On May 12, 2022, scientists unveiled the first-ever image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.
The image, which was taken in the light of submillimeter radio waves, confirms that there is a black hole in the heart of the Milky Way that is feeding on a trickle of hydrogen gas.
The historic image of Sagittarius A* (or Sgr A* for short) came courtesy of the Event Horizon Telescope, a planet-wide array of observatories best known for capturing the event horizon of a black hole in Messier 87 (M87) in 2019.
This video explains how Sagittarius A* appears to still have the remnants of a blowtorch-like jet dating back several thousand years. Credit: NASA.
“Until now, we didn’t have the direct picture to prove that this gentle giant in the center of our galaxy is a black hole,” Feryal Özel, an astrophysicist at the University of Arizona, said during a National Science Foundation news conference held Thursday, May 12th in Garching Bei München, Germany. “It shows a bright ring surrounding the darkness, and the telltale sign of the shadow of the black hole.”
