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We may need to check our assumptions about how the Milky Way looks to an outsider. While the typical artist’s image of our galaxy suggests a barred spiral with long, graceful arms, the challenge is we made these interpretations from data collected from within the galaxy, which provides a poor view of its outer reaches. … Read more
Astronomers have captured the deepest and sharpest images of the Milky Way’s center ever, enabling scientists to estimate the mass of the giant black hole at our galaxy’s heart with unmatched precision. The Milky Way observations, made with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile, also revealed a … Read more
The supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy periodically “burps” a “mini-jet” out into space. The Milky Way‘s supermassive black hole, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), is over 4 million times more massive than our sun. Its strong gravitational pull draws nearby stars and gas clouds into its accretion disk. … Read more