Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*): The
supermassive black hole at the center of our
Galaxy.
Caption: This Chandra image of Sgr A*
and the surrounding region was made from a 164 hours of
observation time over a two-week period. During this time the
black hole flared up in X-ray intensity half a dozen or more
times. The cause of these outbursts is not understood, but the
rapidity with which they rise and fall indicates that they are
occurring near the event horizon, or point of no return, around
the black hole. Also discovered were more than two thousand
other X-ray sources and huge lobes of 20 million-degree
Centigrade gas (the red loops in the image at approximately the
2 o'clock and 7 o'clock positions). The lobes indicate that
enormous explosions occurred near the black hole several times
over the last ten thousand years.
Scale: Image is 8.4 arcmin on a
side.
Chandra X-ray
Observatory ACIS Image
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