Comparing Two Black Holes: Sagittarius A* in Our Milky Way and M87*

Comparing Two Black Holes: Sagittarius A* in Our Milky Way and M87*

Size comparison of the two black holes imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration: M87*, at the heart of the galaxy Messier 87, and Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), at the center of the Milky Way. The image shows the scale of Sgr A* in comparison with both M87* and other elements of the Solar System such as the orbits of Pluto and Mercury. Also displayed is the Sun’s diameter and the current location of  NASA's Voyager 1 space probe, the furthest spacecraft from Earth launched in 1977. M87*, which lies 55 million light-years away, is one of the largest black holes known. While Sgr A*, 27,000 light-years away, has a mass roughly four million times the Sun’s mass, M87* is more than 1000 times more massive. Because of their relative distances from Earth, both black holes appear the same size in the sky.

Credit: EHT collaboration (acknowledgment: Lia Medeiros, xkcd)/European Southern Observatory (ESO)

Release Date: May 12, 2022

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