We finally have an image of the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way
The behemoth, Sagittarius A*, appears as a faint shadow surrounded by glowing material
By Liz Kruesi and Emily Conover
There’s a new addition to astronomers’ portrait gallery of black holes.
Astronomers announced May 12 that they have finally assembled an image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.
“This image shows a bright ring surrounding the darkness, the telltale sign of the shadow of the black hole,” astrophysicist Feryal Özel of the University of Arizona in Tucson said at a news conference announcing the result.
The black hole, known as Sagittarius A*, appears as a faint silhouette amidst the glowing material that surrounds it. The image reveals the turbulent, twisting region immediately surrounding the black hole in new detail. The findings also were published May 12 in 6 studies in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.