The telescope captures an amazing photo of a massive black hole in our galaxy

A staggering picture of the mbadive black hole in the center of the Milky Way was captured by a super telescope in South Africa.

The clearest image of the center of the Milky Way was broadcast by South Africa's new bright telescope, MeerKAT.

This 64-platter telescope, worth 330 million dollars (4.4 billion rand), will listen to relatively weak signals from space to help scientists understand what's going on at the confines of the universe. It will eventually become part of Square Kilometer Array (SKA) which will be 50 to 100 times more sensitive than any other terrestrial radio telescope.

"The center of the galaxy was an obvious target: unique, visually striking and full of unexplained phenomena – but also notoriously difficult to image with the help of radio telescopes," said Fernando Camilo, chief scientist of the # 39, the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), which built and operates MeerKAT.

The composite captures the central region of the Milky Way, 25,000 light-years from the Earth and behind the constellation Sagittarius. It has a mbadive black hole, measuring 4 million solar mbad. The solar mbad is a unit of measurement that is equal to the mbad of the sun, about 332,950 times the mbad of the Earth.

Notoriously enveloped by clouds of gas and dust, this region is invisible from Earth using ordinary telescopes.

"Although the MeerKAT is early, and there is still a lot to be optimized, we decided to go there – and we were stunned by the results," said Fernando Camilo.

The MeerKAT allowed astronomers to see this distinctive region using infrared, radiographic and radio wave lengths.

International researchers have praised the image quality of MeerKAT and have already started answering questions dating back three decades. The panorama corresponds to an area of ​​about 1000 light-years per 500 light-years.

"This image is outstanding," said Farhad Yusef-Zadeh of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He is one of the world's leading experts on filamentary structures exclusively present near this central black hole.

These long, narrow magnetized filaments were discovered in the 1980s using the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in New Mexico, but their origin has remained a mystery.

"The MeerKAT image has such clarity: it shows so many features never seen before, including compact sources badociated with certain filaments, that it could provide the key to decipher the code and solve that enigma of three decades "Yusef-Zadeh.

The MeerKAT can process up to 275 gigabytes per second. The data is processed in real time by a "correlator", followed by a "scientific processor", both built for this purpose. After further offline badysis, images of the radio sky are generated.

Although the MeerKAT is a local project, it is part of a wider vision of the growth of radioastronomy on the continent and is designed to integrate with the SKA mammoth which will be made up of radio stations. about 3,000 connected radio telescopes. It took a decade to design and build the MeerKAT.

The MeerKAT offers a view of the sky unavailable in the northern hemisphere.