Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy Photographed

The Milky Way Galaxy has a very important position for humanity because of the presence of our solar system in it. When this is the case, the mysteries of the Milky Way become much more remarkable.

Astronomers have been searching our galaxy for years to better understand the mysteries in the Milky Way. Thanks to the VLTI (Very Large Interferometer Telescope), the clearest picture to date of the ‘heart’ of our galaxy has been taken.

Heart of galaxy photographed thanks to VLTI

This image, created by combining images from 4 large and 4 auxiliary telescopes owned by VLTI, also enabled the black hole called Sagittarius A*, located at the heart of the Milky Way, to be observed. Astronomers compared the data obtained by photographing multiple times and found that the stars you see in the photo above are orbiting a black hole.

“By tracking and photographing the stars around Sagittarius A*, we learned their movements around the black hole and gained more insight into the heart of the Milky Way,” said Reinhard Genzel, explaining that this discovery is a huge step towards understanding our galaxy.

Black hole has the same mass as millions of suns

As a result of research conducted between March and July 2021, Genzel and his team announced that the black hole named Sagittarius A* has the same mass as 4.3 million Suns and is 27,000 light-years away from our planet. The main purpose of this research, which was carried out as part of the project called GRAVITY, was to calculate the rotation speed of this black hole located at the very center of the Milky Way. The researchers announced that they have now started the necessary work to calculate this speed.

If the GRAVITY project is successful, humanity can use the power of black holes to travel very quickly in space in the future.