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I'm sorry, I am really confused. Didn't we get "the first picture of the black hole at the center of our galaxy" like 2-3 years ago? I definitely remember seeing a nearly identical photo, and lots of press coverage about a particularly young woman who was closely involved in the project. What that something different?



That image was also captured by the EHT of the supermassive black hole (M87*) at the center of the M87 galaxy. The woman you're thinking of is Dr. Katie Bouman, now faculty at Caltech. She is also listed as an author on this work of imaging Sgr A*.


as crazy as it sounds: that black hole was actually in a different galaxy :)


Funnily enough, M87* is bigger than Sgr A* by about the same factor than it is farther away (~2000x ?), and these effects mostly cancel out so the effective resolution of each is about the same. They chose to image M87* first because there is less dust/gas obstructing the view through intergalactic space to M87 than through the bulk of the milky way disk.


The image from a few years ago, was taken of a blackhole in a different galaxy.


That was M87, a different galaxy. Same group of scientists, though.


Nope, that was a black hole in another galaxy- Messier 87




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