Dr. Becky
Dr. Becky
1 hour ago
There it is! WHAT A BEAUTY! The first resolved image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way from the Event Horizon Telescope 🥳🥳🥳 check out the short I just posted for my live reaction. There won’t be a video from me tonight, instead I’ll start prepping a video now to try and film & post tomorrow! With that in mind, comment on this post what questions you have about the image, e.g. things you still don’t understand or are curious about, and I’ll try to answer them in the video! For now, the three main take away points are:
1️⃣ it’s the first direct evidence of central black hole in Milky Way (see the dark shadow in centre)
2️⃣ it’s an average image because the material around the black hole was very variable
3️⃣ the image agrees with predictions of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity

An astrophysicist’s live reaction to THAT BLACK HOLE IMAGE #shorts

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/x_UgLCrXWXg

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6rG-mGKuWDg

Article in Science Alert:

BREAKING: We Have The First-Ever Image of The Black Hole at The Center of The Milky Way

Four and a half billion years ago, our pale blue dot was born in the rubble left over from the birth of a star. Since then, we’ve been locked in a cosmic dance; Earth whirls around the Sun; and the Sun whirls around the galactic center – the dark, mysterious heart of the Milky Way.

Contained in that dark heart, around which the entire galaxy revolves, is a supermassive black hole named Sagittarius A*, clocking in at roughly 4.3 million times the mass of the Sun. We’ve been able to infer its presence, and measure it, based on the movements of objects around it, but never had we seen the object itself.

Never, that is, until now.

That image at the top of the screen – looking like a glorious blurry orange donut – is the dust around and shadow of Sgr A* itself, seen by humanity for the very first time, thanks to the hard work of the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration.

“We were stunned by how well the size of the ring agreed with predictions from Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity,” said EHT Project Scientist Geoffrey Bower of Academia Sinica in Taipei.

“These unprecedented observations have greatly improved our understanding of what happens at the very center of our galaxy, and offer new insights on how these giant black holes interact with their surroundings.”

Full Report

Just amazing. It wasn’t that long ago that the milky Way’s central supermassive black hole was conjectural.

Obv, this beasty is much smaller and nearer than the first blacknhole nucleus imaged, in M87, which is millions of light years away. Sagittarius A* is only 27000 light years away.

Ine again I am blown away by the resolution. The real width of the central “hole” shown here is something like 2 billionths of the distance to target. It’s like imaging an ant from Low Earth Orbit. What an age of wonders.

Happy space nerd day!

Here’s a 1m30s video about capturing the “average” photo of supermassive black holes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXRACQC9kU0

And here’s an article about why astronomers captured M87’s SMBH before Sgr A*.
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/milky-way-supermassive-black-hole/

Bubblecar said:

“We were stunned by how well the size of the ring agreed with predictions from Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity,” said EHT Project Scientist Geoffrey Bower of Academia Sinica in Taipei.

“These unprecedented observations have greatly improved our understanding of what happens at the very center of our galaxy, and offer new insights on how these giant black holes interact with their surroundings.”

Full Report

But wouldn’t they have been even more stunned if it didn’t agree with Albert’s predictions.

And if it agreed so well with predictions, how has it improved their understanding?

Interesting article though :)

I still think that “black hole” is a boring name for these critters.

Given that we have quasars, pulsars, blazars etc, they should have called black holes squeezars.

But a Google tells me squeezar is now being suggested for a different class of object, orbiting a black hole.

Bubblecar said:

I still think that “black hole” is a boring name for these critters.

Given that we have quasars, pulsars, blazars etc, they should have called black holes squeezars.

But a Google tells me squeezar is now being suggested for a different class of object, orbiting a black hole.

Sucquar

dv said:

Bubblecar said:

I still think that “black hole” is a boring name for these critters.

Given that we have quasars, pulsars, blazars etc, they should have called black holes squeezars.

But a Google tells me squeezar is now being suggested for a different class of object, orbiting a black hole.

Sucquar

Hoovar

Bubblecar said:

dv said:

Bubblecar said:

I still think that “black hole” is a boring name for these critters.

Given that we have quasars, pulsars, blazars etc, they should have called black holes squeezars.

But a Google tells me squeezar is now being suggested for a different class of object, orbiting a black hole.

Sucquar

Hoovar

Nwar

Oo.

Gravox

dv said:

Bubblecar said:

dv said:

Sucquar

Hoovar

Nwar

a dyson sphere.

Dr. Becky
423K subscribers
The Event Horizon Telescope collaboration just released the first ever image of the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole (the same group that took the first ever image of a black hole in 2019 – the one in the centre of the Messier 87 galaxy). What do we learn from this image? Why is it orange? Why is it different to the M87 image? Why is it blurry? And can we observe the same thing with the James Webb Space Telescope?

Why yes this was filmed and edited in a single day. Thanks for noticing. Yes I am exhausted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtnFwNKEmyY