1st image of Milky Way’s huge black hole revealed
WASHINGTON, May 14, (AP): The world’s first image of the chaotic supermassive black hole at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy doesn’t portray a voracious cosmic destroyer but what astronomers Thursday called a “gentle giant” on a near-starvation diet.
Astronomers believe nearly all galaxies, including our own, have these giant black holes at their center, where light and matter cannot escape, making it extremely hard to get images of them. Light gets bent and twisted around by gravity as it gets sucked into the abyss along with superheated gas and dust.
The colorized image unveiled Thursday is from the international consortium behind the Event Horizon Telescope, a collection of eight synchronized radio telescopes around the world. Previous efforts to capture a good image found the black hole too jumpy.
“It burbled and gurgled as we looked at it,” the University of Arizona’s Feryal Ozel said.
She described it as a “gentle giant” while announcing the breakthrough along with other astronomers involved in the project. It also confirmed Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity by being precisely the size that Einstein’s equations dictate. This one is about the size of the orbit of Mercury around our sun. Black holes gobble up galactic material but Ozel said this one is “eating very little.” It’s the equivalent to a person eating a single grain of rice over millions of years, another astronomer said.
Scientists had expected the Milky Way’s black hole to be more violent, but “it turned out to be a gentler, more cooperative black hole than we had simulated,” Ozel said. “We love our black hole.”
“It is the cowardly lion of black holes,” said project scientist Geoffrey C. Bower of Taiwan’s Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Because the black hole “is on a starvation diet” so little material is falling into the center, and that allows astronomers to gaze deeper, Bower said.
The Milky Way black hole is called Sagittarius A(asterisk), near the border of Sagittarius and Scorpius constellations. It is 4 million times more massive than our sun.
This is not the first black hole image. The same group released the first one in 2019 and it was from a galaxy 53 million light-years away that is 1,500 times bigger than the one in our galaxy. The Milky Way black hole is much closer, about 27,000 light-years away. A light year is 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers).
To get the picture the eight telescopes had to coordinate so closely “in a process similar to everyone shaking hands with everyone else in the room,” said astronomer Vincent Fish of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The project cost nearly $60 million with $28 million coming from the US National Science Foundation.
“What’s more cool than seeing the black hole at the center of our own Milky Way,” said California Institute of Technology’s Katherine Bouman.
Lunar Eclipse: A total lunar eclipse will grace the night skies this weekend, providing longer than usual thrills for stargazers across North and South America.
The celestial action unfolds Sunday night into early Monday morning, with the moon bathed in the reflected red and orange hues of Earth’s sunsets and sunrises for about 1-1/2 hours, one of the longest totalities of the decade. It will be the first so-called blood moon in a year.
Observers in the eastern half of North America and all of Central and South America will have prime seats for the whole show, weather permitting. Partial stages of the eclipse will be visible across Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Left out: Alaska, Asia and Australia.
“This is really an eclipse for the Americas,” said NASA’s Noah Petro, a planetary geologist who specializes in the moon. “It’s going to be a treat.”
All you need, he noted, are “patience and eyeballs.” A total eclipse occurs when Earth passes directly between the moon and the sun, and casts a shadow on our constant, cosmic companion. The moon will be 225,000 miles (362,000 kilometers) away at the peak of the eclipse - around midnight on the US East Coast.
“This is this gradual, slow, wonderful event that as long as it’s clear where you are, you get to see it,” Petro said.
If not, NASA will provide a livestream of the eclipse from various locations; so will the Slooh network of observatories.
There’ll be another lengthy total lunar eclipse in November, with Africa and Europe lucking out again, but not the Americas. Then the next one isn’t until 2025.
Launched last fall, NASA’s asteroid-seeking Lucy spacecraft will photograph this weekend’s event from 64 million miles (103 million kilometers) away, as ground controllers continue their effort to fix a loose solar panel.
NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins, a geologist, plans to set her alarm clock early aboard the International Space Station.
“Hopefully, we can be up in time and be at the right place at the right time to catch a good glimpse,” she told The Associated Press earlier this week.
Also: VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE, Calif.:
A SpaceX rocket carried 53 satellites for the Starlink internet constellation into orbit Friday after blasting off from California.
The Falcon 9 booster lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 3:07 pm, and minutes later the first stage landed on a droneship in the Pacific Ocean while the second stage continued toward low Earth orbit.
SpaceX later tweeted that the satellites were successfully deployed.
Starlink is a space-based system that SpaceX has been building for years to bring internet access to underserved areas of the world.
Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX has hundreds of Starlink satellites orbiting Earth at an altitude of 340 miles (550 kilometers).
Meanwhile, the roof of Seattle’s iconic Space Needle has been painted “Galaxy Gold” — the original color of of the landmark when it opened during the city’s 1962 World’s Fair.
The 605-foot tower’s paint job is part of the 60th anniversary of Seattle Center, the 74-acre campus that was built for the World’s Fair and now features a sports and performing arts stadium, cultural centers, the city’s popular independent radio station and other amenities.
The anniversary celebration, which began in April, continues for six months.
Desalination project rejected: A California coastal panel on rejected a longstanding proposal to build a $1.4 billion seawater desalination plant to turn Pacific Ocean water into drinking water as the state grapples with persistent drought that is expected to worsen in coming years with climate change.
The state’s Coastal Commission voted unanimously to deny a permit for Poseidon Water to build a plant to produce 50 million gallons of water a day in Huntington Beach, southeast of Los Angeles.
Poseidon said it was disappointed in the decision.
“California continues to face a punishing drought, with no end in sight,” a company statement said. “Every day, we see new calls for conservation as reservoir levels drop to dangerous lows. We firmly believe that this desalination project would have created a sustainable, drought-tolerant source of water.”
The vote came after a heated meeting before the commission attended by dozens of supporters and critics of the plan. It was considered a crucial decision on the future of the plant after years of other hearings and delays.
Poseidon’s long-running proposal was supported by Gov Gavin Newsom but faced ardent opposition from environmentalists who said drawing in large amounts of ocean water and releasing salty discharge back into the ocean would kill billions of tiny marine organisms that make up the base of the food chain along a large swath of the coast.
“The ocean is under attack” from climate change already, Commissioner Dayna Bochco said. “I cannot say in good conscience that this amount of damage is OK.”
Other critics said the water would be too expensive and wasn’t urgently needed in the area where it would be built, which is less dependent on state and federal water due to an ample aquifer and water recycling program.
Commissioners cited those issues in following a staff recommendation and rejecting the proposal. They also cited the energy cost of running the plant and the fact that it would sit in an earthquake fault zone.
Before voting, the 12-member commission heard hours of comments from scores of people packed into a hotel meeting room in the Orange County city of Costa Mesa in addition to those tuning in online. (AP)
Dolphin leaves quarantine:
A rescued juvenile bottlenose dolphin, flown from Texas to the Florida Keys-based Dolphin Research Center seven weeks ago, was moved to the facility’s primary dolphin lagoon.
The transfer marks the male marine mammal’s final integration into a “forever family” of other permanent dolphin residents.
Ranger convalesced in a medical quarantine pool specially designed to increase his eating and weight, while strengthening both his immune system and his bond with human caregivers.
He was rescued a year ago after being discovered stranded in waters around Goose Island State Park in Texas, suffering from an underlying respiratory infection and dehydration following his mother’s death.
After determining that Ranger hadn’t learned enough eating and survival skills from his mother to successfully live in the wild, National Marine Fisheries chose Dolphin Research Center in Marathon as his forever home.
To safely maneuver Ranger from quarantine, DRC staff employed a special marine mammal stretcher and placed him into the natural Florida Bay water of the facility’s main lagoon. Several dolphins in neighboring pools observed as Ranger speedily explored his new home, taking in their sonar signals for the first time since arriving at the rehabilitation facility in late March.
It took less than an hour for Ranger to begin interacting and accepting food from Linda Erb, DRC’s vice president of animal care and training.
“We were surprised he decided to eat within 45 minutes of getting in the pool,” Erb said. “He hasn’t heard dolphin sounds for over a year.” (AP)