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The first ever paradigm of the supermassive black hole at the center of theMilky Waymay not be as accurate as it ab initio seemed , a new study call .
Located 26,000 abstemious - yr from Earth , Sagittarius A * is a gargantuan tear in outer space - time that is 4.3 million times the mass of our sun . The groundbreaking range of the black hole , which was released in 2022 , was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope ( EHT ) , a connection of eight synchronised tuner telescopes settle in various spots around the world .
The image of Sagittarius A, the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, captured by the Event Horizon Telescope.*
But the orange , doughnut - regulate ring of gas surrounding the galaxy could be distorted due to the way the data was stitch together . According to new research , published in the November issue ofMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , the ring is in reality more elongated than it appears in the celebrated image .
" Our [ revised ] image is slightly elongated in the east - west focussing , and the eastern one-half is vivid than the westerly half , " written report lead authorMiyoshi Makoto , an astronomer at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan ( NAOJ),said in a statement . " We suppose that the ring image resulted from error during EHT ’s imaging psychoanalysis and that part of it was an artifact , rather than the actual astronomic social structure . "
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The team’s re-analysis of the Event Horizon Telescope data suggests the accretion disk around the Milky Way’s black hole should be more elongated from east to west
The EHT fascinate the effigy , as well as an image of the supermassive black gob at the center of the M87 extragalactic nebula , in 2017 . Theimage of the M87 Shirley Temple Black holewas release in 2019 , but it took two more years of data analysis before the Milky Way one was ready .
The mental imagery process was prison term - consuming for a number of reason . first of all , blood plasma whips around the black hole ’s accumulation disc at a noteworthy focal ratio , take mere minutes to make a unadulterated compass . Earth ’s localisation at the sharpness of the Milky Way also meant the investigator had to use a supercomputer to percolate out hitch from the immense number of whiz , gasolene and dust cloud strewn between our planet and Sagittarius A * .
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To charm the effigy , the EHT took reading from its radio telescopes dotted around the Earth , then stitched the data together to construct the final image . But this puzzler bit approach could have leave alone detectable gaps in the data .
To check off the image , the NAOJ stargazer enforce what they call " wide - used traditional " analytic thinking methods , give rise resultant role that showed the disc was more squished along its central axis than it appeared in the original image .
The EHT team has yet to point out on the new finding , and it remains undecipherable which view of the phonograph record is the most accurate . The researchers behind the new study hope their findings will harry a respectable discussion from which a more reliable picture of our galaxy ’s gargantuan black hole will emerge .
