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Scientists capture first-ever image of 'the unseeable' black hole

Astronomers on Thursday gave the world a glimpse at what's lurking at the heart of the Milky Way, some 27,000 light-years from Earth.

By Marianne Mizera, AccuWeather front page editor

Published May 12, 2022 10:25 AM EDT | Updated May 13, 2022 10:49 AM EDT

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This is the first image of Sagittarius A* (or Sgr A* for short), the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, 27,000 light-years from Earth. It’s the first direct visual evidence of the presence of this black hole and was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT).

EHT Collaboration

"We got it!" was the exulted statement Thursday from a consortium of scientists who managed to delve deep into space to capture the first-ever images of the supermassive black hole lurking at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

The colorful yet fuzzy image was captured by a network of eight synchronized radio telescopes around the world as part of an international consortium. That global research team of scientists from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration and the U.S. National Science Foundation unveiled the captivating image Thursday at a multi-continent press conference in Washington, D.C., using multiple live streams online.

The image lifts the veil off an object that has mystified scientists studying these giant enigmas for decades.

This Milky Way black hole is 4 million times more massive than our sun, according to scientists.

“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,” officials with Event Horizon and the National Science Foundation said in a statement.

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration has created a single image (top frame) of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy, called Sagittarius A* (or Sgr A* for short), by combining images extracted from the EHT observations.

EHT Collaboration

A black hole is a place in space where gravity is extreme enough, pulling so much that not even light can escape, according to NASA. Gravity is so strong because matter has been squeezed into a tiny space. This can happen when a star is dying.

The same EHT telescope in 2019 produced the first-ever close-up image of a black hole, one farther away -- a monster at the heart of a galaxy known as Messier 87, or M87, about 53 million light-years from the Milky Way. 

The Milky Way black hole -- called Sagittarius A*, near the border of Sagittarius and Scorpius constellations -- is much closer, about 27,000 light-years away from Earth. A light-year is 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers), or the distance that light travels in one Earth year.

Astronomers believe nearly all galaxies have these supermassive black holes at their center, although humans cannot see them because they are completely dark. These vacuous objects swallow light that gets chaotically twisted around by gravity as it gets sucked into the abyss.

But dark, glowing gas around it reveals "a telltale signature: a dark central region called a 'shadow' surrounded by a bright ring-like structure," scientists said.

The new view captures the light bent by the powerful gravity of the black hole.

“We were stunned by how well the size of the ring agreed with predictions from Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity," said EHT Project Scientist Geoffrey Bower, of the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica in Taiwan. "These unprecedented observations have greatly improved our understanding of what happens at the very center of our galaxy.” 

Despite Sgr A* being much closer than M87, this photographic feat was considerably more difficult to capture, the researchers noted.

The gas takes days to weeks to orbit the larger M87. But in the much smaller Sgr A*, it completes an orbit in mere minutes. This means the brightness and pattern of the gas around Sgr A* was changing rapidly as the EHT Collaboration was observing it — “a bit like trying to take a clear picture of a puppy quickly chasing its tail,” said EHT scientist Chi-kwan "CK" Chan, of the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory and Data Science Institute.

More to see:

Never-before seen images of Venus' surface unveiled
Scientists looking for life say Europa looks like a part of Earth
8 of the best telescopes for beginner astronomers

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