Mythic black hole 152 EP

Sagittarius A*

RA 266.4168° · Dec -29.0078° · blackhole

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Score breakdown

· 9 badges

152 pts · Mythic

Mythic Top tier reached ✦

Sagittarius A*, our galaxy's heart +45
The one we photographed +34
Black hole +26
Supermassive black hole +16
Has a proper name +8
Toward the galactic centre +8
Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
Actively feeding +6
On the zodiac +3

Total score 152

Badges

Black hole · +26
Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
Has a proper name · +8
Toward the galactic centre · +8
On the zodiac · +3
Sagittarius A*, our galaxy's heart · +45
The one we photographed · +34
Supermassive black hole · +16
Actively feeding · +6

Trivia

What makes it special

Ours. This is the Milky Way's own: the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy, which every star you have ever seen — including the Sun — is quietly orbiting.
We photographed it. The Event Horizon Telescope linked radio dishes across the whole planet into one virtual telescope the size of Earth, and produced humanity's first direct picture of a black hole's shadow.
It is feeding. Gas spiralling in is squeezed and heated to millions of degrees before it falls, so the disc around it blazes brighter than anything else in the neighbourhood.

Hard to believe

Mass. It weighs about 4.3 million times as much as the Sun, all of it crushed into a region with no surface and no size at all.

Handle with care

A gentle crossing. It is so vast that the stretching is mild at the horizon: you would cross the point of no return entirely intact, feeling nothing, with no way of knowing you had done it.
No way back. Cross the event horizon and every path you could possibly take leads inwards. It is not that you cannot go fast enough — it is that 'out' has stopped being a direction.

What it actually is

Where it lives. It sits at the very heart of Milky Way.
What it is. A supermassive black hole. Practically every large galaxy has one, and how they grew so enormous so early in cosmic history is still an open question.

Properties

accreting: yes
bh class: supermassive
constellation: Sgr
dist ly: 26673
first imaged: yes
gw detection: no
host galaxy: Milky Way
is sgr a: yes
mass solar: 4297000
name: Sagittarius A*
named: yes
schwarzschild km: 12693371.244

Nearby objects

About Sagittarius A*

Sagittarius A* is a mythic black hole. It lies about 26,673 light-years from Earth and sits in the constellation Sgr.

This is the Milky Way's own: the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy, which every star you have ever seen — including the Sun — is quietly orbiting.

How to see it

Look for Sagittarius A* in the constellation Sgr.

Like any astronomical target, Sagittarius A* is best seen from a dark site away from city lights, and when it is above the horizon depends on your latitude and the time of year. The visibility panel above works out tonight's viewing window for your saved location.

Why Sagittarius A* is a mythic black hole

Sagittarius A* scores 152 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the mythic tier.

That score comes from 9 science badges — Black hole, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Has a proper name, Toward the galactic centre, On the zodiac, Sagittarius A*, our galaxy's heart, The one we photographed and Supermassive black hole — each earned for a real, measurable property of the object. Rarity on Spacedle is never random: the more remarkable an object's astrophysics, the more badges it collects, the higher it scores, and the rarer it ranks.