« Desk Hook | Home | Helpful Hints from joeeze: No short charging cable? Make your own! »
March 31, 2023
You are here
This is the approximate location of the Sun in the Milky Way.
The distance from us to the galactic center, where the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* is located, is 26,000 light years (152,844,259,702,773,792 miles).
Below, the first image of Sagittarius A*, captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), an array which linked together eight existing radio observatories across the planet to form a single "Earth-sized" virtual telescope.
The telescope is named after the event horizon, the boundary of a black hole beyond which no light can escape.
Although we cannot see the event horizon itself, because it cannot emit light, glowing gas orbiting around the black hole reveals a telltale signature: a dark central region (called a shadow) surrounded by a bright ring-like structure.
The view captures light bent by the powerful gravity of the black hole, which is four million times more massive than our Sun.
The image, released in 2022, is an average of the different images the EHT Collaboration extracted from its 2017 observations.
To help you keep your feet on the ground, remember you're also here:
This famous "Blue Marble" shot represents the first photograph in which Earth is in full view.
The picture was taken on December 7, 1972, as the Apollo 17 crew left Earth's orbit for the moon.
With the sun at their backs, the crew had a perfectly lit view of the blue planet.
March 31, 2023 at 12:31 PM | Permalink
Comments
The first image is an approximation of the sun's position in an approximation of how we believe the Milky Way to appear.
It may be a real image of another spiral galaxy that we think approximates the appearance of the Milky Way.
Or it may be a rendition of how we believe the Milky Way looks.
I'm not sure which.
Because of course we have no photos from outside the Milky Way looking back at it.
Posted by: g-bull | Mar 31, 2023 2:20:51 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.