At a press conference in Washington, University of Arizona astronomer Feryal Özel highlighted “the first direct image of the gentle giant at the center of our galaxy,” showing a bright red, yellow, and white ring surrounding a darker center.
Sagittarius A* has 4 million times the mass of our sun and is about 26,000 light years – the distance that light travels in one year, 9.5 billion kilometers – from Earth.
black holes they are extraordinarily dense objects with gravity so strong that not even light can escape, which makes its visualization extremely difficult. A black hole’s event horizon is the point of no return beyond which everything – stars, planets, gas, dust, and all forms of electromagnetic radiation – is sucked into oblivion.
Project scientists searched for a ring of light – altered matter and superhot radiation spinning at tremendous speed at the edge of the event horizon – around a region of darkness that represents the black hole itself. This is known as the shadow or silhouette of black hole.
“This image shows a bright ring surrounding the darkness, the telltale sign of the black hole’s shadow,” Özel said.
“Light escaping from the hot gas swirling around the black hole appears to us as the bright ring. Light that is too close to the black hole – close enough to be swallowed by it – eventually crosses its horizon and leaves behind only a dark void in the center“, he pointed.
It turned out to be a smoother, more cooperative black hole than we expected.
“It turned out to be a smoother and more cooperative black hole than we expected in the last decade of simulation of its environment,” added Özel. “We love our black hole.”
The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy containing at least 100 billion stars.. Viewed from above or below, it resembles a spinning pinwheel, with our sun in one of the spiral arms and Sagittarius A* in the center.