Source: Washington Post
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/ ... milky-way/Astronomers on Thursday unveiled the first image of a supermassive black hole that roils the center of our galaxy, its gravity so powerful that it bends space and time and forms a glowing ring of light with eternal darkness at the core. The black hole, seen from Earth near the constellation Sagittarius, has a mass equal to more than 4 million suns.
An image released by the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration on May 12 shows a black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. (AP)
Feryal Ozel, a University of Arizona astronomer, described the achievement as "the first direct image of the gentle giant in the center of our galaxy.” “We find a bright ring surrounding the black hole shadow," she said. "It seems that black holes like doughnuts.” The image was captured by a global consortium of astronomical observatories, known as the Event Horizon Telescope. Three years ago the project produced the first image of a black hole, in the galaxy Messier 87.
The black hole at the center of the Milky Way is more than a thousand times smaller than the one in Messier 87. But cosmically speaking, it is the one closest to home. The unveiling of the image at the National Press Club in Washington was part of simultaneous media events on multiple continents. The image was kept under wraps pending an unveiling at precisely 9:07 a.m. Eastern time.
“They are the most mysterious objects in the universe, and they hold the keys to large-scale structure in the observable cosmos,” said Sheperd Doeleman, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and director of the Event Horizon Telescope, in an interview in advance of Thursday’s briefing.