8There’s a Monster Black Hole in the Galaxy’s Middle

Called Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole weighs in at more than four million times the mass of the sun. We’ve never seen this object directly—it’s hidden behind thick clouds of dust and gas.

But astronomers have been able to follow the orbits of stars and gas clouds near the galactic center, which allowed them to infer the mass of the cosmic heavyweight hiding behind the curtain. It’s thought that supermassive black holes are parked in the cores of most galaxies, and some are feeding on nearby matter so greedily they shoot out jets of powerful radiation visible from millions of light-years away.

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