Milky Way, the first image of the black hole Sagittarius A * explained by scientists

“We have dreamed of it for more than twenty years and now finally here it is”. Thus Ciriaco Goddi, professor at the University of Cagliari and Inaf researcher, presented the first photograph ever taken of Sagittarius A *, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. A feat that took five years just to process the gigantic amount of data collected over the course of a handful of nights by eight radio telescopes distributed in the four corners of the earth, from the South Pole to the Andes mountain range. Together with his colleague astrophysicist and researcher Inaf Elisabetta Liuzzo, Goddi guides us into the secrets of a photograph that represents a historical scientific discovery.

By Francesco Giovannetti and Matteo Marini