Zooming in on our supermassive black hole

Let’s zoom in on the supermassive blackhole at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way…

This zoom sequence starts with a view of the Milky Way. We zoom in towards the crowded central region, in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer). By shifting to an infrared view we see through the dusty clouds in this direction and get a closeup of the objects orbiting the supermassive black hole that lies at the centre of the Milky Way. The final views show the motion of a recently discovered gas cloud that is falling rapidly towards the central black hole.

Credit: ESO/MPE/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org)/VISTA/J. Emerson/Digitized Sky Survey 2