вЂњThe rapidly-changing brightness and pattern of the gas around Sgr A* generate a set of data that is far more complex than that of M87*, which is why we had to develop new numerical tools to simulate and analyse the gas's motion to obtain a clear picture,вЂќ explains CNRS researcher and IRAM deputy director FrГ©dГ©ric Gueth. And for good reason: although the gas in the vicinity of the black holes moves at the same speed, nearly as fast as light, it takes days to orbit M87*, which is 1500 times more massive than Sgr A*and therefore much larger, but just a few minutes to complete an orbit around Sgr A*.

The EHT team's findings are published on 12 May, 2022 in a special issue of the journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters.ДЄlthough Sgr A* is 2000 times closer to us than M87* (which is 50 million light-years away), it proved much harder to image. Therefore, to obtain this picture, the researchers had to combine the data collected night after night by the EHT's eight telescopes linked together across the planet, and then refine the вЂrawвЂ™ images produced using numerical models of black holes. The bright accretion disk orbiting around the 4.3 million solar masses of Sgr A* at near-light speeds has a diameter equivalent to 30 times that of the Sun, but since it is located 27,000 light years from Earth it appears to be about the same size in the sky as a doughnut on the Moon. вЂњWe have images of two black holes вЂ“ one at the large end and one at the small end of the supermassive black holes in the Universe вЂ“ so we can go a lot further in testing how gravity behaves in these extreme environments than ever before.вЂќ вЂњWe can now study the differences between these two supermassive black holes to gain valuable new clues about how this important process works,вЂќ says Keiichi Asada, an EHT scientist at the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, Taipei (Taiwan).

Super masive blackhole