Scientists provided the first look at the ‘gentle giant’ lurking at the center of our Milky Way galaxy - an image of a supermassive black hole that devours any matter within its huge gravitational pull but is currently on a bit of a diet. More here:
Only second image ever made of a black holeMatter found to be trickling, not gushing, into the object
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics astrophysicist Michael Johnson called Sagittarius A* "ravenous but inefficient," currently eating relatively little matter. The image was obtained using the EHT's global network of observatories working collectively to observe radio sources associated with black holes. It showed a ring of light - super-heated disrupted matter and radiation circling at tremendous speed at the edge of the event horizon - around a region of darkness representing the actual black hole. This is called the black hole's shadow or silhouette.
"They go through periods where there is a lot of material around them," Özel said. "... And then they go through these quiescent phases like the one at the center of our galaxy where matter is just trickling in." Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics radio astronomer Lindy Blackburn said that "the smaller physical size of Sgr A* also means that everything changes about a thousand times faster for Sgr A* than M87. We must also peer through the messy disk of our own galaxy to view Sgr A*, which blurs and distorts the image."
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