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Milky Way's Monster Black Hole Data Collected By 'Legion' Of Telescopes
Space.com
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11/02/2025
The image of supermassive black hole Sagittarius A * was created using data from the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration. At the same time several telescopes, including the Chandra X-ray Observatory, were doing observations of their own.
Credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart
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00:00
music
00:03
Visit Chandra's beautiful universe.
00:06
Sagittarius A-Star
00:09
As the Event Horizon Telescope,
00:12
known as the EHT, collected data
00:15
for its remarkable new image of the Milky Way's
00:18
supermassive black hole, a legion of other telescopes,
00:21
including three NASA X-ray observatories in space,
00:24
was also watching.
00:27
Astronomers are using these observations to learn
00:30
more about how the black hole in the center of the Milky Way
00:33
galaxy, known as Sagittarius A-Star,
00:36
Sag A-Star for short, interacts with
00:39
and feeds off its environment some
00:42
27,000 light-years from Earth.
00:45
While the EHT observed Sag A-Star
00:48
in April 2017 to make the new image,
00:51
scientists in the collaboration also
00:55
with facilities that detect different wavelengths
00:58
of light. In this multi-wavelength
01:01
observing campaign, they assembled X-ray
01:04
data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory,
01:07
Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope, or
01:10
NuSTAR, and the Neil Gerald Swift Observatory.
01:13
Telescopes outside of NASA
01:16
involved included the East Asian Very Long
01:19
Baseline Interferometer, or VLBI, network
01:22
that observed radio emission.
01:25
There was also the global 3-mm VLBI
01:28
array, along with infrared data from the
01:31
European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope
01:34
in Chile. One important goal of this
01:37
so-called multi-wavelength observing campaign
01:40
was to catch X-ray flares, which are thought to be
01:43
driven by magnetic processes similar to those seen
01:46
on the Sun, but can be tens of millions of times
01:49
more powerful. These flares occur
01:52
approximately daily within the area of sky
01:55
observed by the EHT, a region slightly
01:58
larger than the event horizon of Sagittarius
02:01
the point of no return for matter falling inward.
02:04
Another goal was to gain
02:07
a critical glimpse of what is happening on larger
02:10
scales. While the EHT result
02:13
shows striking similarities between Sagittarius
02:16
and the previous black hole it imaged, M87,
02:19
the wider picture is much more complex.
02:28
Both of these goals were successfully met.
02:31
The researchers managed to catch X-ray flares, or
02:34
outbursts, from Sag A star during the EHT observations,
02:37
a faint one seen with Chandra and Swift,
02:40
and a moderately bright one seen with Chandra
02:43
Astronomers have seen X-ray
02:46
flares with a similar brightness to the latter with Chandra,
02:49
but this is the first time that the EHT
02:52
simultaneously observed Sag A star.
02:55
This offers an extraordinary opportunity
02:58
to identify the responsible mechanism
03:01
using actual images. Astronomers
03:04
were also able to learn more about the wider and
03:07
complex picture of accretion, one of the
03:10
biggest ongoing questions surrounding black holes
03:13
is exactly how they collect, ingest,
03:16
or even expel material orbiting them at near
03:19
light speed, in a process known as accretion.
03:22
This process is fundamental to the
03:25
formation and growth of planets, stars,
03:28
and black holes of all sizes throughout the universe.
03:31
Scientists will be able to
03:34
use the data being released today to improve
03:37
and hone their theoretical models of how black holes
03:40
behave and interact with their surroundings.
03:43
They will continue to study this unique combination
03:46
to learn more about Sag A star and black holes
03:49
throughout our universe.
04:07
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
04:10
California Institute of Technology
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2:38
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