The first glimpse of the turbulent heart of our galaxy can be seen in an image of the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.
The Sagittarius A* black hole cannot be seen because no light or matter can escape its grip. Its shadow is traced out by a ring of light and matter that is swirling on the precipice at close to the speed of light before it falls into oblivion.
The first image of a black hole in a galaxy was produced by a network of eight radio telescopes, which spanned locations from Antarctica to Spain and Chile.
The black hole in the center of the Milky Way was the main target, according to Prof Markoff. It has been 100 years since the search for these things began.
Mainstream astronomy assumed that there was a black hole at the center of the Milky Way because of the image. Some scientists continued to speculate about the possibility of other exotic objects, such as clumps of dark matter.
Dr Ziri Younsi, a member of the EHT collaboration, said that he was personally happy about the fact that it drills home the fact that there is a black hole at the centre of our galaxy. It made me think that we are fortunate to live at the edge of the universe.
The observations are giving new scientific insights, but the latest image might appear similar to that of M87, which is 55 million light years from Earth. Younsi said there was an emotional and scientific value to finally seeing the enigmatic object.
The team spent five years analyzing data acquired during fortuitously clear skies across several continents in April 2017, despite being local in astronomy terms. The equivalent of seeing a bagel on the moon was required to bring Sagittarius A* into focus.
The image was constantly changing from one observation to the next due to the size of the object. Markoff compared the challenge to trying to capture a puppy with a camera with a slow shutter speed. The radiation from all the intervening stars had to be removed by the scientists. The bright blobs in the image are explained by some combination of these factors.
Younsi said they didn't anticipate how evasive and elusive it would be.
The black hole at close to the speed of light emits radiation that is picked up by the EHT, before vanishing into the central vortex. The black hole is 4 million times more massive than the Sun and the light in the image is bent by its gravity.
The nature of our own black hole is already being given intriguing hints by the latest observations. Our black hole's angle of rotation is off by about 30 degrees, according to simulations based on the data. The observations suggest that SgrA is not active like some black holes, such as M87, which have jets that blast light and matter from the black hole's poles into space.
Scientists hope that observing the competing processes in black holes will help answer a question about the evolution of the universe.
It is an open question about the formation and evolution of the universe. We don't know which came first, the black hole or the galaxy, said Prof Carole Mundell, an astronomer at the University of Bath who is not part of the EHT collaboration.
She said that it was mind-blowing that we could do this.
The results of the EHT team will be published in a special issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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