The image is a long-anticipated look at the massive object that sits at the very center of our galaxy. The image was produced by a global research team called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, using observations from a worldwide network of radio telescopes. This result provides overwhelming evidence that the object is indeed a black hole and yields valuable clues about the workings of such giants, which are thought to reside at the center of most galaxies. UC Santa Barbara and Las Cumbres Observatory graduate student Joseph Farah participated this morning in a press conference in Washington D.C., where astronomers unveiled the first image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy. The image of the Sgr A* black hole is an average of the different images the EHT Collaboration has extracted from its 2017 observations. The new view captures light bent by the powerful gravity of the black hole, which is four million times more massive than our Sun. The telescope is named after the “event horizon,” the boundary of the black hole beyond which no light can escape.Īlthough we cannot see the event horizon itself, because it cannot emit light, glowing gas orbiting around the black hole reveals a telltale signature: a dark central region (called a “shadow”) surrounded by a bright ring-like structure. It was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), an array which linked together eight existing radio observatories across the planet to form a single “Earth-sized” virtual telescope.
It’s the first direct visual evidence of the presence of this black hole. This is the first image of Sagittarius A* (or Sgr A* for short), the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy.
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