Science & Technology

Astronomers unveil first image of black hole at center of Milky Way

Madrid, May 12 (EFE).- Scientists at the Event Horizon Telescope unveiled on Thursday the first image of a black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

At several simultaneous press conferences held in different countries, the researchers unveiled the historic image of the supermassive blackhole – known as Sagittarius A* – that shows an orange and yellow ring with three bright spots.

The image captures a “bright ring formed as light bends in the intense gravity around a black hole that is 6.5 billion times more massive than the Sun,” EHT said in a statement.

EHT added the image provided the “strongest evidence to date” for the existence of supermassive black holes and opens a new research into their event horizons, and gravity.

Black holes are extraordinary cosmic objects with huge masses but extremely compact sizes. Their gravitational pull is such that they suck in everything in their orbit, and nothing – not even light – can escape.

The presence of black holes affects their environment in extreme ways, superheating any surrounding material.

“This is an extraordinary scientific feat accomplished by a team of more than 200 researchers,” EHT project director, Sheperd S. Doeleman of the Center for Astrophysics, said.

“We have achieved something presumed to be impossible just a generation ago,” he added.

EHT connects a global network of 8 pre-existing telescopes deployed at a variety of challenging high-altitude sites including Hawaii, Mexico, Arizona, the Spanish Sierra Nevada, the Chilean Atacama Desert, and Antarctica.EFE

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