We must also peer through the messy disk of our own galaxy to view Sgr A*, which blurs and distorts the image.' Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics radio astronomer Lindy Blackburn said that 'the smaller physical size of Sgr A* also means that everything changes about a thousand times faster for Sgr A* than M87. In contrast, M87's diameter would encompass the entirety of our solar system. The diameter of Sagittarius A* is about 17 times that of the sun, meaning it would sit within the innermost planet Mercury's solar orbit. Sagittarius A*, despite being much closer to our solar system than M87, was harder to image.

That one was far more distant and massive than Sagittarius A*, situated about 54 million light-years from Earth with a mass 6.5 billion times that of our sun. The image released in 2019 showed the supermassive black hole in a galaxy called Messier 87, or M87. And then they go through these quiescent phases like the one at the center of our galaxy where matter is just trickling in.' 'They go through periods where there is a lot of material around them,' Г–zel said. Scientists are trying to better understand how supermassive black holes form early in a galaxyвЂ™s history and evolve over time. Viewed from above or below it resembles a spinning pinwheel, with our sun situated on one of the spiral arms and Sagittarius A* located at the center. The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy that contains at least 100 billion stars. Imaging it was complicated by its dynamic environment including swirling gas around it - as Г–zel put it: 'a source that burbled and gurgled as we looked at it.' 'We love our black hole,' Г–zel said. This is called the black hole's shadow or silhouette. It showed a ring of light super-heated disrupted matter and radiation circling at tremendous speed at the edge of the event horizon - around a region of darkness representing the actual black hole. The image was obtained using the EHT's global network of observatories working collectively to observe radio sources associated with black holes. A black hole's event horizon is the point of no return beyond which anything - stars, planets, gas, dust and all forms of electromagnetic radiation - gets dragged into oblivion. Black holes are extraordinarily dense objects with gravity so strong that not even light can escape, making viewing them extremely challenging. It is putting out only a few hundred times the energy of the sun despite being much more massive. 'If Sgr A* were a person, it would consume a single grain of rice every million years,' Johnson said. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics astrophysicist Michael Johnson called Sagittarius A* 'ravenous but inefficient,' currently eating relatively little matter.

Sagittarius A* (pronounced Sagittarius 'A' star) possesses 4 million times the mass of our sun and is located about 26,000 light-years - the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km) - from Earth. University of Arizona astronomer Feryal Г–zel, at a news conference in Washington, hailed the first direct image of the gentle giant in the center of our galaxy,' showing a glowing ring of red, yellow and white surrounding a darker center. The feat was accomplished by the same Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) international collaboration that in 2019 unveiled the first photo of a black hole - that one residing at the heart of a different galaxy. It would be the loneliest journey in human history indeed.The black hole - called Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A* - is the second one ever to be imaged. The researchers said that the black hole needs to be isolated from the space around it in order for an astronaut to 'safely' enter it.Д«ut even if that is the case, imagine the lonely journey that astronaut would undertake while trying to cross millions of kilometres of event horizon. The gravitational pull in this part in case of supermassive black holes is not as extreme as that in stellar-sized black holes. Such black holes have event horizon stretching to millions of kilometres. All the atoms of his body will be torn apart.Д¬ontrast this with a supermassive black hole like the one at the centre of the milky way galaxy. If an astronaut enters such a black hole he will undergo what's known as Spaghettification. It's not a good idea to try to enter stellar sized black hole as its event horizon is just a few kilometres long and closer to the centre of the black hole. When anyone crosses the event horizon, the massive gravitational pull of the black hole takes over. It is the boundary line, the point of no return. Both these black holes have event horizon.

Jour ey into a black hole