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Astronomy

Light on a dark place

Nature volume 438, pages 32–33 (2005)Cite this article

The sharpest images ever taken of matter around the probable black hole at the centre of our Galaxy bring us within grasp of a crucial test of general relativity — a picture of the black hole's ‘point of no return’.

Ever since its discovery in 1974, a strange source of radio waves in the constellation of Sagittarius has been suspected of flagging the presence of a massive black hole at the centre of our Galaxy1. On page 62 of this issue, Shen et al.2 report the highest-resolution images yet of this source, Sgr A*. These observations provide strong evidence that Sgr A* is indeed a black hole, and afford a glimpse of the behaviour of the matter that is about to flow into it. They are also a further step towards attaining an image of the shadow around the edge of a black hole, a powerful and classic test of the general theory of relativity.

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Figure 1: Hungry mouth.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, 20742, Maryland, USA

    Christopher Reynolds

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  1. Christopher Reynolds
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Reynolds, C. Light on a dark place. Nature 438, 32–33 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/438032a

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