Snapshots reveal a hole in the center of the galaxy "Milky Way"

New evidence of a huge black hole in the middle of the Milky Way galaxy has never been seen before.

Telescopes captured columns of hot gas orbiting celestial bodies at 30% of the speed of light, or about 320 million km / h.

Astronomers have long wondered if the center of our galaxy is home to a black hole, an area 10 times more mysterious than the sun, and because this region absorbs all the light around it. It is very difficult to detect them. Scientists have spent decades looking for any indication of black hole activity.

Scientists explain that the new images detect for the first time a substance in orbit near the point of "no return", as well as the most detailed observations of materials flowing around a black hole.

Researchers from the Southern Europe Observatory used specialized equipment to monitor Sagittarius A, the huge body of the Milky Way Center, and observed blocks of gas in a circular orbit outside the horizon of events in the region, at 30% of the speed of light. Clouds.

These signals were detected from Earth using the VLT telescope in Chile and specialized equipment was used to further investigate the infrared radiation from the growing disk around Sagittarius A *.

"Astronomers have noticed that materials close to black hole access are not being consumed," said Josephine Peters, an astrophysicist at Oxford University, who did not participate at the study. "Although Sagittarius A * is the black hole closest to our galaxy, it's still incredibly mysterious.

The black hole is a larger version of the black holes that form when the centers of the giant stars collapse, and the glow of the material rotates near the horizon of the event in the black hole.