![]() ![]() Therefore the image released depicts not the black hole itself, because it is completely dark, but the glowing gas that encircles the phenomenon in a bright ring of bending light, known as the accretion disc. It was also described as 'the glue that holds the galaxy together'.īlack holes are regions of space where the pull of gravity is so intense that nothing can escape, including light. While announcing the new image, the University of Arizona's Feryal Ozel called the black hole 'the gentle giant in the centre of our galaxy'. In a highly-anticipated string of press conferences held simultaneously around the world, the team behind the Event Horizon Telescope shared their findings after teasing a 'groundbreaking Milky Way galaxy discovery'. The two black holes bear striking similarities, despite the fact that Sagittarius A* is 2,000 times smaller than Messier 87, which is located in a distant galaxy 55 million light-years away. It comes just over three years after the same astronomers revealed the first ever photograph of a black hole. The eagerly-anticipated picture, revealed to the world today, shows Sagittarius A* - which is roughly 4.3 million times the mass of our sun and is located about 27,000 light-years away from the Earth.īecause of its distance from us, experts said it appears the same size in the sky as a donut on the moon. In an historic first, astronomers have captured a remarkable image of a supermassive black hole at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy.
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