The image showed a red-ringed darkness, a view of superheated particles zipping around the stark “event horizon” surrounding the black hole from which even light can’t escape. And Earth is lucky to be close enough to see it - but not too close. The first snapshot of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way showed a placid “gentle giant,” but astronomers now say our galaxy instead hides more of a sleeping monster.Īn international team in May released the first images of the jumbo black hole, called Sagittarius A*, some 4.1 million times heavier than the sun, in simultaneous news conferences worldwide.Īstronomers lucked out to catch Sagittarius A* having a quiet decade, it turns out.
