Bruce Murray Space Image Library

The Milky Way's black hole

The Milky Way's black hole
The Milky Way's black hole Astronomers from a global research team have released the first image ever captured of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The group used observations from a worldwide network of radio telescopes to directly image the object whose existence had previously only been inferred based on the movement of stars around it. The image shows the light of glowing gas being bent by the powerful gravity of the black hole at the center. While the black hole itself is about four million times more massive than our Sun, the ring of light around it is surprisingly tight — it’s only about the size of Mercury’s orbit around the Sun. Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration.