Sagittarius A* is the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, roughly 27,000 light-years from Earth with a mass of about 4.3 million Suns; the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration released the first image of its surrounding light in May 2022.
Facts
Discovery Year Connections
Associated With
Source ESO - First Image of the Black Hole at the Heart of Our Galaxy (2022)European Southern Observatory
Source ESO - First Image of the Black Hole at the Heart of Our Galaxy (2022)European Southern Observatory
Source ESO - Star Dance Around Supermassive Black Hole (2020)European Southern Observatory
Source W. M. Keck Observatory - Andrea Ghez Nobel Prize AnnouncementW. M. Keck Observatory
In the Other Atlases
In Constellation
Also in Divinity Atlas: the constellation this subject lies in.
Sources
1. Wikipedia (space and spaceflight articles)
Wikimedia Foundation
2. Sagittarius A* (Wikipedia)
en.wikipedia.org, Sagittarius A*, lead section
The black hole itself is not seen; as light is incapable of escaping the immense gravitational force of a black hole, only nearby objects whose behavior is influenced by the black hole can be observed.
Sagittarius A*, Wikipedia - lead section, catalogue classification
This is the second confirmed image of a black hole, after Messier 87's supermassive black hole in 2019. The black hole itself is not seen; as light is incapable of escaping the immense gravitational force of a black hole, only nearby objects whose behavior is influenced by the black hole can be observed.
Sagittarius A*, Observation and description
Viewed from Earth, it is located near the border of the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpius, about 5.6° south of the ecliptic.
Article text
Sgr A* was discovered in 1974 by Bruce Balick and Robert L.
In Group: Black Holes, Lead sentence
Sagittarius A*, abbreviated as Sgr A* ( SADGE-AY-star), is the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Center of the Milky Way.
View the SourceESO - Star Dance Around Supermassive Black Hole (2020)
European Southern Observatory, European Southern ObservatoryAssociated With: Very Large Telescope, Opening paragraph, 16 April 2020 releaseQuote, Associated With: Very Large Telescope, Opening paragraph, 16 April 2020 release
Observations made with ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) have revealed for the first time that a star orbiting the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way moves just as predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity.
W. M. Keck Observatory - Andrea Ghez Nobel Prize Announcement
W. M. Keck Observatory, W. M. Keck ObservatoryAssociated With: W. M. Keck Observatory, Nobel Prize announcement paragraphQuote, Associated With: W. M. Keck Observatory, Nobel Prize announcement paragraph
Andrea Ghez, UCLA's Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics and director of the UCLA Galactic Center Group, has won the Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 for her revolutionary research using Keck Observatory to prove the existence of a supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.
ESO - First Image of the Black Hole at the Heart of Our Galaxy (2022)
European Southern Observatory, European Southern ObservatoryAssociated With: Event Horizon Telescope, Mass and distance summary
Sagittarius A* is four million times more massive than our Sun and located approximately 27,000 light-years from Earth.
Associated With: Atacama Large Millimeter Array, EHT array participant list
The EHT network included eight radio observatories: ALMA, APEX, the IRAM 30-meter Telescope, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), the Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano (LMT), the Submillimeter Array (SMA), the UArizona Submillimeter Telescope (SMT), and the South Pole Telescope (SPT).
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