Scientists take a photograph of a black hole located in the centre of our galaxy

The Event Horizon Telescope has taken a photograph of the black hole Sagittarius A*, located in the centre of the Milky Way.

Scientists have known that an object with a strong gravitational field lies in the centre of the Milky Way for a long time. Although now, scientists have managed to see it with their own eyes for the first time. The photograph of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* was taken by the international project Event Horizon Telescope, launched in 2017.

The project consists of groups of eight telescopes located in various parts of the world. They collectively accumulated more than six terabytes of data and developed unique algorithms for their analysis. The project's primary challenge was the object's lack of activity, causing the light from the accretion disk of Sagittarius A* to be obscured by clouds of gas and dust.

As a result, the researchers gathered images of the black hole from different points in the observation. The final photo represents the standard version of the various states of the object.