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Fresh imagery from the Event Horizon Telescope traces the lines of powerful magnetic fields spiraling out from the edge of the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, and suggests that strong magnetism may be common to all supermassive black holes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n The newly released image showing the surroundings of the black hole known as Sagittarius A* \u2014 which is about 27,000 light-years from Earth \u2014 is the subject of two studies published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. This picture follows up on an initial picture issued in 2022. Both pictures rely on radio-wave observations from the Event Horizon Telescope\u2019s network of observatories around the world.<\/p>\n Sagittarius A* wasn\u2019t the first black hole whose shadow was imaged by the EHT. Back in 2019, astronomers showed off a similar picture of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87, which is more than a thousand times bigger and farther away than the Milky Way\u2019s black hole. <\/p>\n In 2021, the EHT team charted the magnetic field lines around M87\u2019s black hole by taking a close look at the black hole in polarized light, which reflects the patterns of particles whirling around magnetic field lines. Researchers used the same technique to determine the magnetic signature of Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A* for short.<\/p>\n \n