First image of galaxy’s black hole

PARIS: An international team of astronomers has unveiled the first image of a supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy – a cosmic body that is known as Sagittarius A*.

The image – produced by a global team of scientists known as the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration – is the first direct visual confirmation of the presence of this invisible object, and comes three years after the very first image of a black hole from a distant galaxy.

“For decades we’ve known about a compact object that is at the heart of our galaxy that is four million times more massive than our Sun,” Harvard University astronomer Sara Issaoun said. “Today, we have direct evidence that this object is a black hole.”

Black holes are regions of space where the pull of gravity is so intense that nothing can escape, including light. The image therefore depicts not the black hole itself, because it is completely dark, but the glowing gas that encircles it.