The first image of a black hole caused a stir in 2019. So far there have been only illustrations. Because black holes are very far away – millions of light years away – and they are also very small.
Now the next sensation could be announced soon. On May 12 at 3 pm, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) wants to provide new information about our galaxy, the Milky Way. Blick.ch will provide a live report.
What exactly will be announced is still unclear. The last time at ESO caused a stir in December 2021. The international team led by Nobel Prize winner in Physics Reinhard Genzel has discovered 70 unknown stars in the center of our galaxy. In addition, by analyzing the orbits of the stars, it was possible to make the most accurate measurement of the mass of a black hole to date.
Observations thanks to the super telescope
Genzel, director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics last year for his research on “Sagittarius A*” (called the Sagittarius star). To find out more about the dark center of the Milky Way, such as exactly how much mass the black hole has, whether it rotates, and whether the stars around it behave as expected from Einstein’s general theory of relativity, whether at best he explained at the time that “following stars in their orbits near the supermassive black hole.
With the help of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Gravity instrument, which collects light from all four of the VLT’s four 8.2-meter telescopes, the researchers were able to make these observations with unprecedented accuracy, and according to ESO, they were times closer to the region than before.
Now researchers can experience a new sensation. (JM/SDA)
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