"During a press conference hosted by the US National Science Foundation with the Event Horizon Telescope (ehtelescope) Collaboration in Washington, D.C. today, astronomers unveiled the first image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy," the organization said in a press release.
The 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.
"The image was produced by a global research team called the Event Horizon Telescope, or EHT, Collaboration, using observations from a worldwide network of radio telescopes," the foundation said.
Scientists had previously seen stars orbiting around something invisible, compact, and very massive at the center of the Milky Way known as Sagittarius A and the new image provides the first direct visual evidence of it and that it is indeed a black hole, the foundation said.