Sagitarius A* captured in polarized Light.

[SpookyZalost]

The image, captured below was taken using the Event Horizon Telescope.  an effort to use all the telescopes on earth to take a composite image of normally hard to image objects such as black holes.



among the discovery is that despite only having a mass of 4.3 million suns.  Our own glactic core not only has strong magnetic field lines like the much more massive one at the center of M83.  but may also have a faint jet like it's much larger and more visible Quasar cousins.

New view of the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way hints at an exciting hidden feature (photo) | Space

[Kyng]

That's an astonishing image .

I'm glad we're observing that thing from a distance, though !

[SpookyZalost]

That's an astonishing image .

I'm glad we're observing that thing from a distance, though !

Ours is relatively tiny I mean... yeah we can safely observe it from 25,000 light years away.  but at a few million solar masses it's not that big.  one of the largest is TON 618 which is so large it's event horizon is a lightyear across.  think about that.  you could fit the entire solar system inside it with ease, ort cloud and all.  It's home galaxy has trillions of stars and makes the milky way look like a dwarf galaxy.

(Edited because name is TON 618 not 610 TON.)

[Kyng]

That's an astonishing image .

I'm glad we're observing that thing from a distance, though !

Ours is relatively tiny I mean... yeah we can safely observe it from 25,000 light years away.  but at a few million solar masses it's not that big.  one of the largest is 610 TON which is so large it's event horizon is a lightyear across.  think about that.  you could fit the entire solar system inside it with ease, ort cloud and all.  It's home galaxy has trillions of stars and makes the milky way look like a dwarf galaxy.

Well, I'm glad we're nowhere near that behemoth .

Might be nice to get a picture of it, though !

[SpookyZalost]

Kyng cool as that would be... TON 618 is 18 Billion light years away at present and the light we see is over 10 billion years old.  It's at the very edge of our ability to see using infra red and radio telescopes.  and that singularity has a mass of over 40 Billlion suns at what we currently believe to be the top end of a black hole for mass.  To put that in perspective.  the entire Triangulum galaxy weighs in close to that including it's dark matter halo.

Edit:  By the way.   this is what the first computer generated image of a black hole was thought to look like.



that was done in 1979 based on just the equations.  it's pretty much spot on.