Astronomers released the first image of Sagittarius A* in 2022.
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration unveiled the image on May 12, 2022. Sagittarius A*, usually abbreviated Sgr A*, is the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, about 26,000 light-years from Earth. It has a mass roughly 4 million times that of the Sun.
The famous orange-ring image does not show the black hole itself, because a black hole emits no light that can escape its event horizon. Instead, it shows glowing plasma and the dark central “shadow” created as light is bent and captured by the black hole’s gravity. The image was reconstructed from observations made by radio telescopes around Earth working together as a planet-sized virtual telescope.
A common mix-up is confusing Sgr A* with M87*, the black hole in the galaxy Messier 87. The EHT released the first-ever black-hole image in 2019, showing M87*. Sagittarius A* was the second black hole imaged, but its much closer location did not make the task easier: its surrounding gas changes within minutes, complicating the observations.