Scientists around the world have succeeded in photographing the real image of a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, the home of our solar system.
An international joint research team at the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), in which the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute participated, captured images of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius (Sgr A) located at the center of the Milky Way and released them on the 12th.
The Sagittarius A black hole is the second black hole following the distant cosmic black hole (M87) observed by the EHT team in 2019. The Sagittarius A black hole, located at the center of the Milky Way, is regarding 27,000 light-years from Earth and has a mass of regarding 4 million times that of the Sun.
Compared to the M87 black hole, the distance from the solar system is close to 1/2,000, making it a strong target for black hole research. However, it has a mass 1,500 times smaller than that of M87, so the gas flow around the black hole changes rapidly, and the image suffers from severe scattering effects, making it difficult to observe compared to M87.
80 institutions around the world and over 300 EHT researchers participated in this study.
A black hole is a black hole, that is, a celestial body that appears black because even light cannot escape due to strong gravity.
In particular, at least one supermassive black hole exists at the center of the galaxy. At the center of most galaxies, including our own, are supermassive black holes with masses ranging from millions to billions of the mass of the Sun.
Sera Markov, co-chair of the EHT Science Board, said, “The black hole revealed this time has a very similar shape to the M87 black hole, which reaffirms the correctness of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.” has been given
