His name was Sagittarius a. International collaboration of astronomers has shown in film that there is a supermassive black hole in the heart of our galaxy. Three years later, the first photograph of a black hole in a distant galaxy was announced on Thursday 12th. May The CNRS.

The “shadow” of the black hole is photographed against a glowing disk, reminiscent of a black hole in a distant galaxy M87, much larger than ours. Scientists see this as evidence that the same mechanisms of physics operate at the heart of two systems at different levels.

This object is about 27,000 light years away from Earth. “I do not knowI’m about the size of a donut in the sky. “ We try to see from the ground, giving the CNRS the idea that distance is hard to find. To achieve this picture, eight existing radio monitors were connected by the EHT network. “EHT observed Sagittarius A for many nights, collecting data for several hours at a time, like the longest exposure time on a camera”CNRS explains.