Scientists snap new photo of the monster black hole at the center of our galaxy

Remember in 2022 when astronomers snapped the very first photograph of the supermassive black hole named Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) located at the center of the Milky Way galaxy? A team of astronomers have pointed their instruments at the region of space once again, capturing a new image of the enigmatic phenomena.

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The first-ever image of the Sgr A* was captured using the Event Horizon Telescope, which is a global network array of radio observatories, and now astronomers have fired up that telescope again to measure the black hole's magnetic fields in polarized light for the first time. The image showcases a magnetic field structure that's strikingly similar to what astronomers observed in 2019, with the very first photograph of a black hole located at the center of the galaxy, Messier 87 (M87).

These results were published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and suggest that these strong magnetic fields may be common to all black holes. Additionally, astronomer observations of M87 revealed powerful jets of material being shot out of the supermassive black hole, and these recent observations of Sgr A* indicate it could be releasing similar jets, despite Sgr A* being 1,000 times smaller than the black hole located at the center of M87.

"What we're seeing now is that there are strong, twisted, and organized magnetic fields near the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy," said project co-lead and Harvard astrophysicist Sara Issaoun in the statement. "Along with Sgr A* having a strikingly similar polarization structure to that seen in the much larger and more powerful M87* black hole, we've learned that strong and ordered magnetic fields are critical to how black holes interact with the gas and matter around them."

"Making a polarized image is like opening the book after you have only seen the cover," explained Geoffrey Bower, EHT project scientist and researcher at the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, in the statement. "Because Sgr A* moves around while we try to take its picture, it was difficult to construct even the unpolarized image."