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Jul 2, 2012

Zooming in on our supermassive blackhole

Posted in Science at 6:59 pm by David Bradley

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

2 Responses to “Zooming in on our supermassive blackhole”

  1. David Bradley says:
    July 3, 2012 at 5:05 pm

    We may never know…

  2. Dr rajasekharan says:
    July 3, 2012 at 5:02 pm

    Wow! Sitting at the fringes, we now watch the drama being played out there at the center. Wonder who else is watching out there!