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Rabat – The Event Horizon Telescope has recorded the first-ever image of a black hole in our galaxy, the Milky Way.
This breakthrough is the first visual confirmation of the black hole, named Sagittarius A*, at the center of the Milky Way, reported the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) on Thursday.
Sagittarius A* is approximately 27,000 light-years from Earth. A light-year is the distance traveled by light in one Earth year.
Observing the Milky Way’s black hole proved more difficult than expected. The EHT spent five years analyzing data collected in April 2017 during unusually clear skies across several continents.
The team, which included 300 researchers from 80 different institutions, coordinated data from eight different radio telescopes around the world that were constantly monitoring Sagittarius A*.
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Astronomers believe that nearly all galaxies have black holes at their centers. Since light and matter cannot escape these black holes, taking pictures of them is extremely difficult. Gravity causes light to be chaotically twisted and warped around as it is pulled into the dark abyss.
EHT highlighted that Sagittarius A* is four million times bigger than our sun.
The EHT had previously discovered the first black hole, located more than 50 million light-years away in the center of a massive elliptical galaxy known as Messier 87. Astronomers believe that “nearly all black holes” are surrounded by an outer ring called “event horizon,” where no light can escape its gravitational pull.
A campaign in March 2022 increased the number of radio telescopes by three. This contributed to the EHT network’s ongoing expansion. Thus, resulting in significant technological advancements, allowing scientists to share even more impressive images and movies of black holes in the near future.
