The image was revealed on Thursday by astronomers from the EHT collaboration.
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His name is Sagittarius A. An international collaboration of astronomers has proven in image the existence of a supermassive black hole in the heart of our galaxy, three years after the first photo of a black hole, located in a distant galaxy, announced Thursday, May 12 the CNRS.
The “silhouette” of the black hole silhouetted against a luminous disc of matter is reminiscent of the black hole in the distant galaxy M87, which is much larger than ours. Scientists see it as proof that the same mechanisms of physics are at work at the heart of two systems of very different sizes.
The object is about 27,000 light-years from Earth. “Il seems to have in the sky the size equivalent to a donut on the Moon”, which we would try to see from the ground, schematizes the CNRS to give an idea of this difficult to perceive distance. To achieve this image, eight existing radio observatories were linked by the EHT network. “The EHT observed Sagittarius A for several nights, collecting data for several hours at a time, much like a long exposure time on a camera”explains the CNRS.