[May 12, 2022; 3:55 pm EDT ] - Astronomers unveiled the first image of a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and, yes, it looks like a donut.
By the standards of typical humans, it also looks a heck of a lot like M87, which in 2019 became the first black hole to be imaged. The similarities buttress key theories of physicist Albert Einstein.
There are differences too. This one is different, being smaller, and closer to home. It's shorter width and shorter remove mean it is more besotted by obscuring cosmic dust particles - they fuzz and blur resolution.
Today’s find – actually, it was imaged in April – is known as Sagittarius A*. It was identified nearly 50 years ago as the nearest supermassive black hole candidate and became among the most studied astrophysical objects there are, according to researchers writing in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Both black hole radio images came via the Event Horizon Telescope project, which uses advanced timing circuitry, disk drives and software to stich together information from a global network of telescopes “to compose one large telescope as big as Earth.”
Many innovations were required to enable this level of imaging, according to Kerry Haworth, CTO for Center for Astrophysics.
Haworth described the imaging challenge using an analogy that should be familiar to students, young and old.
"There were no answers in the back of the book for this one," she said.
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