For the first time, successful astronomers photograph a black hole in the heart of our galaxy

KOMPAS.com – For the first time, astronomers have managed to reveal a real photo black hole in the center Milkyway Galaxy.

This is a huge achievement because only three years ago, scientists managed to capture the appearance of a black hole in another galaxy M87* or Messier 87 for the first time.

Well, this time astronomers took a photo of a black hole named Sagittarius A* or Sgr A* (pronounced A-Star). Black hole This is an object 27,000 light years from Earth, which is four million times larger than the Sun.

As for the black hole is just darkness, we can not see directly the appearance of the black hole. However, we can see in photos taken by astronomers, how light bends due to the gravitational pull of Sgr A*.

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This image was created thanks to the collaboration of the Global Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) team which uses eight radio telescopes around Earth. To note, EHT is the team that published images of the M87* black hole in 2019.

Comparing the M87* which is a thousand times bigger and massive than the Sgr A*; Sera Markoff, Co-Chair of the EHT Science Council and a professor of theoretical astrophysics at the University of Amsterdam, said that although the two have very different masses and are in different types of galaxies, they look very similar at the edges.

“This tells us that general relativity governs these objects up close, and any differences seen from farther away must be due to differences in the matter surrounding the black hole,” he said. ).