Mayank Chhaya in conversation with Prof.Dr. Feryal Özel.
A team of astronomers has zeroed in on a long-theorized supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way and produced its first picture. “The gentle giant”, as it has been described, has over long periods devoured the equivalent of 4 million suns whose only remnants are their gravity and a brutalized space-time.
The team captured the first-ever image of Sgr 2A black hole. The announcement was made today during a press conference hosted by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) with the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration in Washington, D.C.
“This result provides overwhelming evidence that the object is indeed a black hole and yields valuable clues about the workings of such giants, which are thought to reside at the center of most galaxies,” the NSF said.
One of the astronomers involved in this extraordinary project is Dr. Feryal Özel, Professor, Departments of Astronomy and Physics at the Steward Observatory in Arizona. With a Ph.D. from Harvard University, Professor Özel is a well-regarded scientist with many honors to her credit.
