PAGE 13 2022 WINTER EDITION
Taking A Photo Of The Impossible We finally get to see our galaxy’s black hole By Matt Woods
On the 12th of May, humans finally got to see Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole that sits at the core of our galaxy, the Milky Way. The image was created from data that was collected by the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration. In 2019, this ground-breaking collaboration released the historic first image of a black hole, that of the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Galaxy M87. Up until now, we were fairly sure that our Galaxy also had a supermassive black hole at its centre, but we were missing the proof. While some theories over the past years suggested we did not, this stunning image finally proves that we do. This image shows us the accretion disk around our black hole, a disk-like flow of ionised gas, dust, and stellar debris that orbits the black hole, not quite falling in. We can see this disk because the immense force of the black hole’s gravity accelerates the spinning particles, and they smash into each other releasing X-rays and gamma rays. We can also see the event horizon, the inner hole of the doughnut which is the threshold where to escape the pull of the black hole, you would need to move faster than the speed of light. The ring shape in the image comes from the gravity around the black hole bending the light from the accretion disk behind the black hole so that we can see it. The image is actually a monochromatic image, the team uses orange to add colour to the image, so it is easier to see the details in the image. The three bright nodules are clumps of dust and gas. The top right one is brighter due to the doppler effect.
