Black hole in the heart of the Milky Way imaged for the first time

Almost four decades ago, a team of astronomers noticed a dark object with stars whirling around it at roughly a third of the speed of light. Last week, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration team revealed an image of this dark object—a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. It has been named Sagittarius A* or Sgr A* (pronounced sadge-ay-star). The research team’s findings¹ have been published in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.