A Black Hole At The Center Of The Milky Way Galaxy – Say Hello To Sagittarius A*
On May 12, 2022, astronomers on the Event Horizon Telescope team released an image of a black hole called Sagittarius A* that lies at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Chris Impey, an astronomer at the University of Arizona, explains how the team got this image and why it is such a big deal.
This image shows Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
EHT Collaboration, CC BY-SA
1. What is Sagittarius A*?
Sagittarius A* sits at the the center of our Milky Way galaxy, in the direction of the Sagittarius constellation. For decades, astronomers have been measuring blasts of radio waves from an extremely compact source there.
In the 1980s, two teams of astronomers started tracking the motions of stars near this mysterious source of radio waves. They saw stars whir...