Sagittarius A* at the Galactic center
Sagitario A*: agujero negro en el centro de la Vía Láctea
- Date
- 1974 · confidence high
- Place
- Green Bank Observatory, West Virginia, United States
- Credited to
- Bruce Balick and Robert Brown (detection); Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez (mass from stellar orbits)
- People
- 👤 Andrea M. Ghez1965–👤 Bruce Balick1943–👤 Reinhard Genzel1952–👤 Robert Brown1926–2022👤 Robert Hanbury Brown1916–2002
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
A compact radio source at the galactic centre turned out to be a black hole of 4 million solar masses, demonstrated by tracking the orbits of nearby stars (star S2) over decades.
The stellar orbits were measured from Keck (Mauna Kea) and the VLT (Paranal).
What it led to
- Supermassive black holes in all galaxies
- 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics
- 2022 EHT image
Built on
Made possible
- First image of a black hole (EHT)2019
- infrared adaptive optics