For a long time, researchers have speculated that there’s a supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy.

Now they have proof, generated by the creatively named Very Large Telescope (VLT) – four telescopes stationed in the Atacama Desert in Chile.

Using the VLT, which is indeed very large (see below), scientists have been observing Sagittarius A* (pronounced Sagittarius A-star), an object in the centre of the Milky Way galaxy.

During their work, the research team observed three bright flares orbiting around Sagittarius A*, which completed 150-million-mile circuits in just 45 minutes. That’s roughly a third of the speed of light.

The object at the centre of the galaxy is over four million times the mass of the sun. The fact that it fits into such a small orbit indicates that’s it’s most likely a black hole. Here’s Engadget:

“This always was one of our dream projects but we did not dare to hope that it would become possible so soon.” Reinhard Genzel, the researcher who led the study, said in a statement.

“The result is a resounding confirmation of the massive black hole paradigm.” Scientist Oliver Pfuhl added, “It’s mind-boggling to actually witness material orbiting a massive black hole at 30 percent of the speed of light. GRAVITY’s tremendous sensitivity has allowed us to observe the accretion processes in real time in unprecedented detail.”

GRAVITY is an instrument that allows the four telescopes that make up the VLT to study distant objects that wouldn’t be visible otherwise. The following image was created using data collected by GRAVITY and other telescopes to illustrate the black hole. BussinessInsider describes it like this:

Orange shows what researchers think is the blob of superheated gas, or plasma, while blue shows radiation that bleeds off the matter and occasionally bursts into bright flares.

The picture also illustrates the bending and distortion of light caused by the black hole warping spacetime with its concentrated mass, an effect called gravitational lensing.

Check it out:

If you want a closer look, this video lets you zoom inside the galaxy:

Very cool, and very trippy.

[source:engadget]