Behold: The First Image of Our Galaxy's Central Black Hole

An image of Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, has just been achieved by the group behind the first-ever image of a black hole. This breakthrough in our understanding of our home galaxy and the astrophysics of its center is significant.

The event horizon telescope is a group of radio telescopes. The team is able to see black holes, regions of spacetime with such intense gravity that not even light can escape them, by combining the observations of these telescopes. The shadow of Sagittarius A* can be seen in the image released today.

The structure and immediate environments of two black holes called Messier 87 and Sagittarius A* are being investigated by hundreds of scientists. M87 is 54 million light-years from Earth and was imaged by the collaboration in 2019. The subject of the research announced today is the Sagittarius A* black hole, which is just 27,000 light-years away.

It took a half century for Sagittarius A* to be identified after the radio waves from the core of the galaxy were discovered. We assumed that Sagittarius A* was a supermassive black hole because of the bright radio source, but today's image shows that is not the case.

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