The First Picture of the Black Hole at the Milky Way's Heart Has Been Revealed

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May 12, 2022

Dear Reader, This week, we're staring into the Milky Way's heart of darkness—literally. This morning, scientists from the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration unveiled the first-ever direct image of the four-million-solar-mass black hole at our galaxy's center. The image itself is not obviously remarkable, looking more like a fiery, blurry donut than some fearsome engine puncturing the fabric of spacetime. But it represents the fruition of decades of work by thousands of researchers. The feat ushers in a new era in our understanding not only of supermassive black holes, but also their broader influence upon their host galaxies, and their emergence from the fundamental physical laws that shape the universe.

Lee Billings, Senior Editor, Space & Physics @LeeBillings

Black Holes The First Picture of the Black Hole at the Milky Way's Heart Has Been Revealed The historic image of Sagittarius A* is the culmination of a decades-long astronomical quest—and a crucial step toward a new understanding of black holes, gravity and spacetime By Seth Fletcher

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Black Holes How Astronomers Finally Captured a Photo of our Own Galaxy's Black Hole It took hundreds of researchers and many telescopes to capture an image of black hole at the middle of our Milky Way. By Seth Fletcher,Tulika Bose,Jeffery DelViscio | 03:52

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FROM THE STORE Scientific American Volume 326, Issue 5

QUOTE OF THE DAY "Today, the Event Horizon Telescope is delighted to share with you the first direct image of the gentle giant in the center of our galaxy, Sagittarius A*." Feryal Özel, astrophysicist and member of the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration

FROM THE ARCHIVE Does Einstein's Theory of Gravity Hold Near Black Holes? General relativity has never been tested in places where the effects of gravity become truly extreme—for example, at the edge of a black hole. That will soon change By Dimitrios Psaltis,Sheperd S. Doeleman | September 2015

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