First image of black hole at centre of Milky Way unveiled

The first-ever image of the black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy has been unveiled.

The picture of Sagittarius A* was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope and released to the public Thursday.

The black hole is said to be four million times bigger than our sun.

We finally have the first look at our Milky Way black hole, Sagittarius A*. It’s the dawn of a new era of black hole physics. Credit: EHT Collaboration. #OurBlackHole #SgrABlackHole
Link: https://t.co/Ax7ECRVg8A pic.twitter.com/LRWizSYOy9

— Event Horizon 'Scope (@ehtelescope) May 12, 2022

According to the National Science Foundation, the resulting image “provides overwhelming evidence that the object is indeed a black hole,” as well as provides more learning opportunities about other objects like it.

“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 from the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, Taipei.

“These unprecedented observations have greatly improved our understanding of what happens at the very centre of our galaxy and offer new insights on how these giant black holes interact with their surroundings.”

The foundation notes the black hole is about 27,000 light-years away from us. As such, for those of us on Earth, it looks like it’s about the same size in the sky as a doughnut on the moon.

The Event Horizon Telescope links together eight radio observatories across the globe to form what the National Science Foundation describes as a “single ‘Earth-sized’ virtual telescope.”

The process of capturing the image spanned “many hours in a row,” similar to how you would take a long-exposure photo on a camera.

This is not the first such image released by the Event Horizon team. In 2019, the EHT collaboration released the first picture ever of a black hole at the centre of the Messier 87 galaxy, which is farther away.

However, the foundation notes the imaging this time around was “considerably more difficult.”

“This image is a testament to what we can accomplish, when as a global research community, we bring our brightest minds together to make the seemingly impossible, possible,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan.

Our own black hole! Astronomers have just revealed the 1st image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy using the @ehtelescope– a planet-scale array of radio telescopes that emerged from decades of NSF support. https://t.co/bC1PZH4yD6 #ourblackhole pic.twitter.com/pd96CH3V0m

— U.S. National Science Foundation (@NSF) May 12, 2022

“Language, continents and even the galaxy can’t stand in the way of what humanity can accomplish when we come together for the greater good of all. This is a historic moment where we see the black hole at the heart of our Milky Way as a capstone achievement following decades of intense curiosity-driven discovery research. NSF is proud to be an international partner that invests in this innovative research and the infrastructure that makes such fantastic discoveries possible.”