【好学不倦•西希外语】学习干货篇--1st image of supermassive black hole at the center of Milky Way galaxy revealed
For the first time, astronomers have captured an image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.
It's the first direct observation confirming the presence of the black hole, known as Sagittarius A*, as the beating heart of the Milky Way.
Black holes don't emit light, but the image shows the shadow of the black hole surrounded by a bright ring, which is light bent by the gravity of the black hole. Astronomers said the black hole is 4 million times more massive than our sun.
"For decades, astronomers have wondered what lies at the heart of our galaxy, pulling stars into tight orbits through its immense gravity," Michael Johnson, astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, said in a statement.
"With the (Event Horizon Telescope or EHT) image, we have zoomed in a thousand times closer than these orbits, where the gravity grows a million times stronger. At this close range, the black hole accelerates matter to close to the speed of light and bends the paths of photons in the warped (space-time)."