Milky Way's supermassive black hole looks like a donut in the sky | Science-Environment (2024)

Last week, astronomers revealed the first image of the black hole at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy - Sagittarius A* which lies about 27, 000 light-years away from Earth. The supermassive black hole's shadow is only 52 micro-arcseconds wide on the sky - about the size of a donut on the surface of the moon as seen from Earth.

Black holes cannot be directly imaged as they are completely dark, but the radio waves emitted by the superheated glowing gas and dust surrounding them can be measured, creating the donut-like shape as seen in the image of Sgr A*.

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) shared a picture on Monday that shows that the shadow of Sgr A* is about the same size in the sky as a donut on the Moon.

Mmm… donuts… 🍩 Our Picture of the Week shows that the shadow of Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the centre of our galaxy, is about the same size in the sky as a donut on the Moon.🔗 https://t.co/VLYalkispFCredit: @ehtelescope , @ESO /M. Kornmesser, @NASA , Lu Amaral pic.twitter.com/51cLARBxSy

— ESO (@ESO) May 16, 2022

The long-anticipated image of Sagittarius A* was revealed by a global network of astronomers from the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration using observations from a worldwide network of radio telescopes including ALMA and APEX, co-owned by ESO. The Collaboration includes more than 300 researchers from 80 institutes around the world.