How Big Is Our Galaxy, The Milky Way?

Brie Larson singing on Instagram

      H E I G H T  D I F F E R E N C E

literally us gays growing up and trying to relate to something

I'm so amazed

Black Holes Are Real And Spectacular, And So Are Their Event Horizons

“Originally estimated to be slightly larger than its M87 counterpart, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way — known as Sagittarius A* — has not yet had its event horizon imaged. When you observe the Universe, you don’t always get what you expect; sometimes, you get what it gives you. Instead, it was M87’s black hole that came through first, which was a much brighter and a much cleaner signal.

What we’ve found is spectacular. Those dark pixels at the center of the image are actually the silhouette of the event horizon itself. The light that we observe comes from the accelerated, heated matter around it, which must emit electromagnetic radiation. Where the matter exists, it emits radio waves, and the dark circle we see is where the background radio waves are blocked by the event horizon itself.”

We have an event horizon, folks! It wasn’t the one at the center of our galaxy that came through first, but rather the one at the center of Messier 87: a black hole over 1,000 times more massive, but some 2,000 times farther away, than the one contained in the Milky Way. This is an ultramassive black hole that’s almost the size of the entire Solar System, and its event horizon is real.

Come get the full story on what we know, now that we have our image, about black holes in the aftermath of the Event Horizon Telescope!

Now we just need Jaimie Alexander returning as Lady Sif

Natalie Portman returns in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Jane Foster / female Thor

History has been made today

The first image of a black hole, from the galaxy Messier 87

April 10, 2019

“From the script’s first draft, Larson says she noted the significance of women being involved, in all stages of the film’s creative process.”

focused

M87 on different scales and wavelengths

VLA radio image of the galaxy M87 in 1999. We are looking at complex flows of matter 200,000 light years across (that’s twice the size of our galaxy, the Milky Way). Let’s get closer.

X-ray image by Chandra, 2019 - we are looking at very energetic emission here! The close-up is about 25,000 light years across. Let’s look more closely…

Composite (UV, optical, infrared) image from the Hubble Space Telescope (2000). You can see the plasma jet the central Supermassive Black Hole ejects. The width of the image is 5000 light years.

Are you ready to see what’s causing all this mess?

This image is a fraction of a light year across (edited by Randall Munroe of XKCD). The supermassive black hole weighs 6.5 billion times our Sun!

Let them all come, Clint. Let every last one of those tracksuit-wearing sub-verbal bullying murderous scumbags come at us. Because you and me? Together? Together, Clint, I think you and me are the person we both wish we could be.