• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, photographed for the first time

Aggelos

Member
The Event Horizon Telescope just gave us an image of the Black Hole at the heart of our galaxy!



"Astronomers have unveiled the first image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy. This result provides overwhelming evidence that the object is indeed a black hole and yields valuable clues about the workings of such giants, which are thought to reside at the centre of most galaxies. The image was produced by a global research team called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, using observations from a worldwide network of radio telescopes."


















 
Last edited:

p_xavier

Authorized Fister
Astronomy for me is the ultimate hope. The universe is so grand that parts of me just says it's so perfect that it must have been intelligent design. Not so fun fact: I always wanted to be an astronomer, I even won a job opportunity in 2010 in the field (but seems that a Ph.D. wasn't a diploma for the 22yo at the time HR woman, so I never could start the job because of that imbecile).
 

haxan7

Banned
i want to enter it
Danny Devito No GIF by reactionseditor
 

farmerboy

Member
Really makes you think.

Me too. I like to think that the reason the universe is so big and mysterious is that an infinite universe gives us something to do in an eternal afterlife.

Imagine being able to freely wander around observing the entirety of creation and seeing all its wonders and mysteries.
 

Rival

Gold Member
The size and distances of things like this always blows my mind and I always get sad knowing there is so much out there that we will never know or understand but it’s fascinating.
 

Pagusas

Elden Member
Also to further help people understand radio telescope images, here is what the planets look like when done via RTI:

june-2010-radio-waves.jpg

jupiter-visradio.jpg


I always like to add bits of context and examples to threads like this, never know when a new little scientist will be inspired by this stuff :)
 
Last edited:
Astronomy for me is the ultimate hope. The universe is so grand that parts of me just says it's so perfect that it must have been intelligent design. Not so fun fact: I always wanted to be an astronomer, I even won a job opportunity in 2010 in the field (but seems that a Ph.D. wasn't a diploma for the 22yo at the time HR woman, so I never could start the job because of that imbecile).

The universe is so layered in how it works that nothing intelligent has the creativity to make it, just like the human body. It's simply too granular to have the creativity to design it. But it is also flawed so we have to do things to prevent it from making itself less efficient, like reducing swelling in order to heal faster.
 
Last edited:

SJRB

Gold Member
I feel that even with a 10-minute video explaining the triumph of this image I can still barely process the magnitute or scale of what I'm actually seeing.

It's so insane. Space is crazy.
 

Zeroing

Banned
Ah good, another Sagittarius A*
That is how my friends describe me.

I feel that even with a 10-minute video explaining the triumph of this image I can still barely process the magnitute or scale of what I'm actually seeing.

It's so insane. Space is crazy.
Yes it is, a bit off topic, the photos of the Apollo missions on the moon always scared me because the rules of photography, meaning light and reflections etc are not the same as on earth...

We are tiny grains of dust and knowing what we are seeing now in space is actually the past is even mind blowing.
 

Kadve

Member
Ah good, another Sagittarius A*
It's pronounced "(The) Sagittarius A Star"

It was originally "discovered" trough a radio signal coming from the Sagittarius constellation. This signal was named Sagittarius A and as this was in 1933 and before Black Holes were really known, the source of the signal was believed to be some kind of unknown type of star. Hence the "Sagittarius A Star".

The name was kept when we learned it came from a (until recently) hypothetical black hole.

As for why the *? Just some geek humour that took on a life of its own. Robert Brown started using it in 1982 because the radio source was "exciting", and the excited states of atoms are denoted with asterisks.
 
Last edited:

nkarafo

Member
Also to further help people understand radio telescope images, here is what the planets look like when done via RTI:

june-2010-radio-waves.jpg

jupiter-visradio.jpg


I always like to add bits of context and examples to threads like this, never know when a new little scientist will be inspired by this stuff :)
As a filthy casual i mostly care about images of the visible light. I like the feeling of being close to a far away object, looking at it.
 
Top Bottom