Access
This article is part of Nature's premium content.
Published online 6 September 2001 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news010906-10
News
Huge black hole in Milky Way
Astronomers find long-sought evidence confirming black hole close to home.
On the 26 October last year, a tiny patch of darkness in the constellation Sagittarius flashed a brief pulse of X-rays into space, providing compelling evidence that slap-bang in the middle of our Galaxy is one of the weirdest objects known to astronomers: a supermassive black hole.
So many observations point to the existence of black holes that physicists talk about them as if they are old friends, yet no one has ever actually verified their presence.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Comments
Reader comments are usually moderated after posting. If you find something offensive or inappropriate, you can speed this process by clicking 'Report this comment' (or, if that doesn't work for you, email webadmin@nature.com). For more controversial topics, we reserve the right to moderate before comments are published.
There are currently no comments.
