The centre of our Milky Way galaxy is located in the southern constellation Sagittarius (The Archer) and is "only" 26,000 light-years away. On high-resolution images, it is possible to discern thousands of individual stars within the central, one light-year wide region.
Using the motions of these stars to probe the gravitational field, observations over the last decade have shown that a mass of about 3 million times that of the Sun is concentrated within a radius of only 10 light-days of the compact radio and X-ray source SgrA* ("Sagittarius A") at the centre of the star cluster.
This means that SgrA* is the most likely counterpart of the black hole believed to exist at the centre of our Galaxy.
Find more information on this image as well as other formats in the Gallery.
置顶卡
变色卡
千斤顶
显身卡
