#PICS OF A SUN TURNING INTO A BLACK HOLE SERIES#

That gives it a special place in astronomers’ hearts - and makes it a unique place to explore the physics of our universe. She is also a member of the EHT team.Īlmost every large galaxy is thought to have a supermassive black hole at its center. This astrophysicist works at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. But Sgr A* is “humanity’s black hole,” says Sera Markoff. That snapshot of M87’s black hole was of course historic. It’s about 55 million light-years from Earth. That object sits at the center of the galaxy M87. It also produced the first image of a black hole, released in 2019. That telescope network is called the Event Horizon Telescope, or EHT. It required a planet-spanning network of radio dishes. No single observatory could get such a good look at Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A* for short. She is also part of the team that captured the new black-hole portrait.

She’s an astrophysicist at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “This image shows a bright ring surrounding the darkness, the telltale sign of the shadow of the black hole,” said Feryal Özel at a news conference in Washington, D.C. They also reported it in six papers in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

#PICS OF A SUN TURNING INTO A BLACK HOLE SERIES#

Researchers announced it in a series of news conferences around the world. This vista could help scientists better understand the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole and others like it. The image reveals the turbulent, twisting region right around the black hole in new detail. There is a new addition to astronomers’ portrait gallery of black holes. And it’s a beauty.Īstronomers have finally assembled an image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Known as Sagittarius A*, this black hole appears as a dark silhouette against the glowing material that surrounds it.

Pics of a sun turning into a black hole